


In The Special Collection

by Guede



Series: The Summer Movie Marathon [2]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Archaeology, Established Relationship, Inappropriate Humor, Lunatic Archaeologist Pep, M/M, Mercenary Figo, Minor Character Death, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 06:15:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4776695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pep refuses to let his friends in Argentina get eaten by some unknown monster, and Luís refuses to let Pep be a brave idiot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Special Collection

Lionel stared at the puddle on the floor. It looked sticky and thick, like somebody had spilled coffee and then let it dry instead of getting a mop. Then he looked up at the door. It had a glass insert for the top half, but the glass was frosted so he couldn’t see into the office. The brass plate screwed on by the knob said it belonged to Dr. Diego Simeone, Anthropologist.

Ten minutes later, Lionel, Cambiasso and Zanetti were standing in front of the door. Cambiasso hefted his rifle and looked at Lionel. “Did you try knocking?”

Lionel shrugged. In truth he hadn’t, but Cambiasso should’ve known that just from the puddle.

Zanetti had the janitor’s master keys and a flamethrower, which he handed to Lionel for some reason. It was heavy and Lionel hadn’t been expecting to get it, so he staggered a little under the weight. Then he got a good grip on it and straightened up just in time to see Zanetti twist the knob. His blood chilled and sheer worry opened his mouth.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing to my office?”

That hadn’t been Lionel. He jumped and turned at the same time, and when he came down, Dr. Simeone was standing in the hall staring at the flamethrower. Lionel blushed and pointed the tip away from the man.

“There’s some shit under your door,” Cambiasso pointed out. He gestured at the stain.

Dr. Simeone looked at Cambiasso, then at the stain. Then he looked at Lionel. He squinted while raising his mug to his face, and after he’d swigged some of his drink, he jerked his chin at Lionel. “Hey, you’re the kid from Barcelona, aren’t you? We’re supposed to have a talk about the Castilla project, right?”

Lionel nodded.

“Yeah…” Dr. Simeone looked at the stain again “…I was supposed to get your old professor Guardiola on the phone right about now about that with what’s his name, the guy from the international relations office.”

Zanetti had been standing and listening with the knob twisted but the door still shut. Now he untwisted the knob and stood away from the door. “Do you think he’s inside?”

“Maybe,” Dr. Simeone said. He drank some more of his drink, tipping it into the side of his mouth so his cool stare wasn’t blocked by the rim of the mug. Then he abruptly threw back his shoulders and strode over.

He grabbed the knob and jerked open the door. Lionel bit down on his lip; Cambiasso was a bit quicker and jabbed his rifle in past Dr. Simeone. Both Cambiasso and Dr. Simeone stared into the dark room for a few moments. Lionel couldn’t see past them but he could see Cambiasso’s face and it didn’t look very happy.

“The cleaning staff’s already gone home,” Zanetti noted after a second. He pulled out his mobile. “I think the groundskeeper might still be around.”

“Tell him to bring a pitchfork and some garbage bags,” Dr. Simeone said. He stepped back, mouth knotted up in a disgusted snarl. “Christ. And it’s not like we’ve got the budget to get me a new couch.”

That opened up a little space between Dr. Simeone and Cambiasso. Lionel couldn’t help himself and edged forward into it. He accidentally tapped Cambiasso in the leg with the flamethrower and muttered an apology. Then he craned his neck to see over Cambiasso’s shoulder, just as Cambiasso turned to see what was the matter.

“Oh, man, don’t look,” Cambiasso said, putting his hand up in front of Lionel’s face. Then he moved it to Lionel’s shoulder and nudged Lionel back into the hall. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and patted Lionel’s cheek. “You all right? It’s pretty fucking nasty, I know. Listen, there’s some water in—”

“If it’s from that crate from the pampas dig, don’t we need to shut down campus?” Lionel blurted out. He clutched at the flamethrower when they all just looked oddly at him. “The—that’s all the way in the other wing, too. If it got from there to here, where’s it now?”

Cambiasso and Zanetti looked at each other. Then Zanetti blinked and stepped back for Dr. Simeone, who’d just marched into…well, it was his office. Even if it had a mess like that on the…what used to be his couch.

Dr. Simeone picked up the phone and dialed a number. He waited a couple seconds, idly looking around the room—his gaze crossed the couch and he twitched, then shifted to look in the other direction. Then his brows went up. “Yeah, it’s Diego. Do me a favor, check the storage room. The shipment we just got from the plains site. It still in there? Anybody open it up yet?”

“Gaby?” Zanetti said. When Lionel looked at him, the other man was on the phone as well. “Gaby, we think there’s another, well, thing running around. Yes, someone from the IR office. Um, no, we’re still working on that. Get Martin up and then call the police, all right? No, I’ll call the dean.”

“Figures,” Dr. Simeone muttered into the phone. “I tell you to get that thing sorted today and you leave it for Monday, and now we don’t even know what was in it. No, just get a weapon and sit tight till somebody gets you. I don’t know, a spare laser pointer? You got a penknife?”

The flamethrower was starting to make Lionel’s arms hurt, so he propped it up against the wall. He noticed Cambiasso looking at him and didn’t know why, except that maybe he wasn’t supposed to put the flamethrower down? But it didn’t seem like they were in danger right now, and anyway he wasn’t sure that a flamethrower would help. They were in a wooden building, not one of the university’s original stone buildings.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to call Guardiola’s visit off,” Cambiasso said gently. “I’m sorry, Leo. I know you were looking forward to it.”

Lionel blinked. “Why would I have to call it off? He’s got his plane ticket and everything.”

Cambiasso’s face sort of tried not to scrunch. He put his arm back and scratched at his head. “Leo, we’ve got some kind of monster running around. Isn’t that going to put him off?”

* * *

“Just a second,” Pep said, hunching over his laptop. His brow furrowed as he squinted at the screen. Then he reached up and fiddled with his Bluetooth. He tweaked it around his ear before finally yanking it off and just picking up his phone. “Damn it, I don’t even know why I try. They always say it’s not going to shift but it…I’m sorry, Leo, you don’t need to be bothered with that. So tell me again what the marks looked like? Uh-huh…right…”

Luís was just on the cusp of sleep. It was a comfortable bed at a comfortable temperature, and even though Pep had long since broken his promise to wrap up his work for the day, he was keeping his voice down to a soothing murmur. His legs were stretched out next to Luís under the blankets and Luís had a good grip on Pep’s knee so he knew the man wasn’t going to go wandering off. He really should just fall asleep and leave Pep to do whatever it was he was doing at this hour.

“Would you say they were from teeth or claws?”

He might not be taking commissions any more, but Luís hadn’t retired his brain. He sighed and opened his eyes.

Pep had stopped typing and was sitting straight up, staring vaguely out with the phone glued to his ear. In an earlier misguided show of proof that he really was going to bed, he’d turned off all the lights and so now he was glowing eerily gray in the backlight from his laptop screen. He had changed out of his suit and the threadbare cotton tee he had on both teased Luís with a glimpse of collarbone and pointed out that Luís needed to drag Pep into a clothes store soon. “Well, of course I’m still coming!” Pep suddenly said. “Why on earth would I cancel? Especially now, Leo—if I can help I’d like to. Yes, I know I’m not a zoologist.”

He swung out his arm for emphasis and Luís reflexively ducked under it, then pushed his head up Pep’s hip, which shifted under him. For a moment Luís thought Pep had noticed, but no, that’d just been another gesturing fit. Luís went back to reading Pep’s computer screen: airplane booking. Right, that trip Pep had scheduled for Argentina to visit an old student of his. Pep had offered for Luís to come along but Luís had declined; he had enough to occupy him in town and to be truthful, not having Pep around for a week would help with that. Although longer than a week and Luís started to duck at non-existent flailing.

“…no, if he’s busy, then let him be. Just tell Diego I’ll still be coming and that I’ll try and give him a call—” Pep finally noticed Luís poking at his laptop and gave Luís a dirty look, then put down a hand to shove at Luís’ head “—a call tomorrow to discuss details. And be careful, Leo. All right. All right, call me if you have any questions.”

Luís shook Pep’s hand off his head and sat up, taking Pep’s laptop with him. He elbowed away Pep’s first grab and then let Pep take it on the second so he could get Pep’s phone. Pep got his laptop shut down and on the bedside table before he realized.

“No, window’s fine. Thanks,” Luís wrapped up hurriedly. Then he shut off the phone and held it out to Pep with a smile.

Pep glowered at him. “What are you doing?”

Luís wiggled the phone. When Pep didn’t take it, Luís let it drop into Pep’s lap. Then he dropped back on the bed. “Bites and clawing? Interesting private life your student has.”

“He does _not_ —it’s not to do with Leo, it’s this thing that’s running around and not avoiding my questions like you are,” Pep said. He moved around, the phone clunked on the table, and then Pep was leaning over to glower at Luís some more. “You did something to my plane ticket. Luís, I know that your former profession left you with this habit of—of proactive behavior, but I thought we talked—”

“I was just booking myself a ticket,” Luís sighed.

Pep’s mouth stayed open for a few seconds. Then he pulled it shut and stared at Luís, brow still furrowed but less glowery. He blinked a few times. The only light now was coming from some street-lamps outside. “What?”

“Look, Pep, we can talk about it if you want, but the fact is, if you’re going to be throwing yourself into danger, I’m not going to sit here at the phone for updates.” Luís raised himself on his elbows. He waited for Pep to back up to accommodate him, then slung his arm around Pep’s waist and flipped them over. Then he slid up to pin Pep’s torso with his weight so he could intercept Pep’s hands, which predictably had shot straight for his thighs. He pushed them back into the bed. “I changed your flight so we’re sitting together. It’s a fifteen-minute difference in arrival and frankly, if the luggage carousels in Buenos Aires are like I remember, that’s not going to keep your friends waiting any longer.”

Blink. Frown. Narrow eyes, widen them, purse lips in preparation to say something and then instead choose to frown some more. “You’re coming? I thought you said you were busy,” Pep said. “With things you couldn’t give me specifics about.”

“Well, I’ll put them on hold.” Luís stayed where he was. “Once I’m sure you’re not going to insist we discuss this some more.”

Pep’s eyes were still narrowed. “You’ll put them on hold. Just like that.”

“Just what exactly are we discussing?” Luís asked after a moment. He shifted so he was straddling Pep, which kept the man down while being easier on the back. “I’m all for frank conversations, but I think a necessary condition to such is that I know what the hell is bothering you. Look, you tend to get into somewhat life-threatening situations and I’m fairly good at getting you out of them—”

“Sample size of _one_ , where you helped put me in the situation,” Pep said. Normally he was well-mannered almost to the point of parody, but right now…well, as fond as he was of Pep, Luís had to call that snarky. “I just want to know why you’re so concerned right now, as opposed to when I first told you—”

Luís rolled his eyes. “Because when you first told me about it, there wasn’t something running around biting and clawing people.”

“So? I was still going away, and anyway, there are plenty of things that run around biting and clawing people in Argentina,” Pep snapped. Then his liberal nature kicked in—Luís could literally see it flicking in the back of Pep’s eyes—and he grimaced. “I mean, that is, not to cast aspersions on Argentina because it’s not right to stereotype Latin American countries as more or less unreasonably dangerous than—”

“Do you want me to not go?” Luís asked, exasperated. Not that he was going to mention it now, but he probably was more familiar with the relative dangers of South America and Europe.

Pep shut his mouth. For a while he looked at Luís like he wanted to duck the question. Then he dropped his head back and closed his eyes and sighed. “No. No, I’d like you to come. I’m just very…I don’t know why or how you make these decisions and it bothers me.”

Of course it did, the neurotic control-freak that Pep was. The average person might have issues upfront with Luís’ background but Pep was perfectly fine with looking past that. It was when he started poking around in the little details and inner workings that he started to get antsy. And so did Luís, to be completely honest.

Luís let go of Pep’s wrists. He scratched at the side of his neck, then reached out for the phone on the bedside table. After making sure it was set to silence, he lowered himself on top of the other man. Pep’s lashes fluttered as Luís settled his arms across the man’s chest. Then Pep opened his eyes, but only to stare at the ceiling.

“I know,” Luís said. “I’m sorry. But I _am_ telling the truth when I say I’m going because I don’t want you to get bitten or clawed.”

Pep grunted, then tilted his head to look at Luís. His left hand skittered up Luís’ hip before sliding across Luís’ back. “Really?”

Luís arched a brow. Not just dropping a whole career to help Pep save a pack of smartass grad students, or rescuing Pep from Mourinho’s clutches, but doing all that plus putting up with Villa and Morientes and Flores and Albelda. Was the man seriously asking that question?

“Because Xavi had to tell me to pull up my collar _again_ just this afternoon, before I had a sit-down with Johann and the head curator,” Pep said, a trace of playfulness coming into his voice. He fingered a fading hickey on his neck, trying and failing to look stern. “It’s _not_ funny, don’t look like that at me, I was horribly embarrassed—”

“I know, but I think you look great embarrassed,” Luís grinned. He bent forward and nipped at the spot Pep had just pointed out.

Pep jerked, then smacked Luís on the side of the head, his knees coming up to try to nudge Luís away. They had the boniest caps but Luís just ignored them and latched firmly onto Pep’s neck, sucking till he could feel the man’s skin molding to his teeth. He slithered a hand down Pep’s shorts and Pep put his hand back on Luís’ head. He rubbed at the place he’d hit, then twisted his fingers in Luís’ hair and heaved them over, dropping his hips down into Luís’ hand. He might be neurotic but he damn well made the case for academic hot air being a good thing.

* * *

“Sorry,” Luís said. “If I’d had any idea Pep was bringing anyone else, I would’ve rearranged your flights too.”

Xavi shrugged and leaned against the huge stack of baggage he was watching. The rest of Pep’s people were in the men’s toilet, apologizing to God for picking the non-chicken entrée. Pep was in there too trying to be soothing or something like that while Xavi somehow didn’t look smug about being the only one to pack a meal. “He always tries to take at least a student along if he can, for the experience, but that can be expensive. A lot of the time the department isn’t exactly footing it so he doesn’t bring it up. You know?”

“Well, I’ll remember to ask next time. See if I can do something about your seats, too.” Thanks to Luís’ accumulated mileage from his old job, he and Pep had traveled in first-class. Not that Pep had really made the comfort worth it, as he’d worked the entire way except for an inadvertent nap where Luís had had to hold his head out of his laptop till the flight attendant came to help put his seat down. “You have a nice trip besides the meal?”

“Yeah, it was all right. Little bit of turbulence. Gerard was whining about the legroom but I don’t think me or Andrés had a problem with it.” Then a tinny announcement came on and Xavi stopped to listen. He frowned, then jerked around and stared at the bathrooms. “Son of a whore, that’s our luggage coming in. We’ve got to—Andrew! Andrés! Gerard! Our bags are on the carousel!”

Luís held up his hand. When he got Xavi’s attention, he gestured towards the carousels. “Listen, I’m not doing anything. I’ll go and get a cart for you, save a spot there.”

“Oh, great, thanks. Our bags all have FC Barcelona tags, if you happen to see one,” Xavi said distractedly. He glanced down as Luís started to move off, then jerked his chin at Luís’ carry-on. “Seriously, I wish we could travel that light.”

A few minutes later, Zlatan was staring at the same bag and looking utterly disgusted. “I _know_ you could’ve pushed the size limit a little more,” he said, shoving the handle of an admittedly much bigger wheeled bag at Luís. Then he turned around and yanked irritably at the fully-laden luggage cart behind him. “Honestly, I said okay, fine, I could use a break from Nesta’s fucking inability to appreciate a helping hand. Didn’t say I’d be your goddamn gofer.”

“Which is why I am very grateful that you did such a fine job getting things through customs,” Luís said. He went up to the cart and got off the rest of his bags, then started to pull them away. “Go ahead and start your vacation, then.”

“What?” Zlatan stopped, then pivoted around. “Where are you going?”

Luís pointed at the next carousel over, where the first bags were just starting to hit the conveyor belt. “Pep brought a few of his students along, but they were on a different flight. I’m going to get their bags and then wait for them. You can get going—we probably don’t need to talk till I see a dead body.”

“That’s so…nice of you,” Zlatan drawled. His initial disbelief was fast draining away behind the slightly mocking grin he wore. “Those kids don’t know what an honor it is, having you bus their luggage.”

“Get out of here, Ibra. When I need you to lecture me on honor…” Shaking his head, Luís headed for the nearest baggage carts.

He looked back once he’d gotten a cart, but Zlatan had smartly made himself disappear. No mean feat, considering the average height around here—but it wasn’t really the time for Luís to be smug about that either. Luís piled his and Pep’s bags onto one cart, then pushed that and an empty cart over to the carousel. He had to do some nudging and dirty looks, but eventually he won himself a prime spot right next to the drop-off chute for the ramp.

Three bags had come down by the time Pep and the rest caught up with him. Gerard’s beard was dripping water but otherwise he looked all right; Andrés was still looking greenish and seemed perfectly fine with sitting on the cart while Xavi immediately tried to climb onto the carousel after a piece of luggage. Some airport staff member yelled, Pep trotted over to smooth things out and in the meantime, Xavi tossed two bags to Gerard.

Things seemed in hand, so Luís wandered a little off to the side and took out his mobile. He’d checked it when they’d gotten off the flight but only to see who’d messaged one. Now he started scrolling through them, keeping an eye out for Zinedine’s number. He hadn’t been feeding Pep a line when he’d said he had things to do in town, and changing his mind about going hadn’t made those things disappear. Most of them Zinedine could handle in Luís’ place, though that was really just shifting things Luís had to deal with now to things he had to deal with later, but a couple Luís had had to rush through before they’d left. It looked like at least one hadn’t gotten wrapped up properly.

“All right, I think we’ve got—” Pep said, coming up behind Luís. Then he stopped and frowned. He glanced at Luís’ phone. His mouth tightened a little, but then he threw back his shoulders and looked Luís in the eye. “We’ve got all the bags. Leo said he and his friend would be waiting for us out front, by this café. Do you need a minute?”

“No, I’m fine.” Luís put his hand on the cart with his and Pep’s bags. He nodded behind Pep. “Is your student all right?”

Pep blinked, then looked over his shoulder. He spotted Andrés clutching at his stomach and immediately went over. While his back was turned, Luís texted Larsson back that he was sorry about the screw-up and would get a replacement in tomorrow, if that was fine. He forwarded the text to Zinedine, then shut his phone and started pushing the cart towards the exit.

* * *

Lionel Messi was as mop-haired and short as his online records had said, and could barely look Luís in the eye long enough for a handshake. He acted friendly with Xavi and Andrés, was a little more standoffish with Gerard and grinned at his sneakers when Pep predictably began over-organizing the process of fitting them and their bags into the two cars they had available. Overall he seemed fairly innocuous.

His friend Kun was much more outgoing and bubbly, but clearly didn’t know anyone very well. He and Xavi soon found common ground in football and were arguing over the merits of a local rising star while they loaded bags into the trunk. Lionel tried to help but quickly got squeezed out and went to sit with Andrés, still a little ill, in the front seat of one car.

“Well, if things don’t calm down soon, maybe we can get you guys into a game,” Kun said, shutting the trunk. He stepped back, paused and thought, and then retrieved his sunglasses from the top of the car. Then he waved for Xavi to go and grab a seat. “They kind of shut everything down, so there’s not too much you can see at the university.”

“Shut down where?” Luís asked, eyeing the other car, where Lionel and Andrés were. He’d seen Kun’s driving record and had absolutely no intention of letting Pep get anywhere near that. He’d also tried to get some information on what was going on at the university, but aside from a couple _very_ cursory coroner’s reports, hadn’t been able to turn up anything. If he’d still been active, he probably could have strong-armed someone into it but these days his resources were a little more limited.

Kun blinked, while behind him Pep turned sharply to stare at Luís. For a moment Luís thought he might’ve been too blunt—Pep had introduced him to Kun and Lionel as a weaponry specialist, which was technically true but on which Luís devotedly wanted to avoid questions—but then Kun shrugged and scratched at his head. “Well, the anthropology wing’s mostly closed. They only let you in to get your stuff and only in groups. I don’t really know much else about it.”

“Well, we can talk about it over dinner,” Pep said firmly. He was still staring at Luís, which frankly was a bigger give-away than Luís’ question that something was up. “Why don’t we get to where we’re staying first, and eat something? I’m starving.”

“Oh! Sure, definitely.” Kun jingled car keys and made as if to open a car door for Pep. “We laid out a whole _asado_ for you guys, so you’re not gonna have a problem with that for much longer.”

As Kun turned towards the car, Luís shoved Gerard in the back so the other man stumbled between Pep and Kun. Then he grabbed Pep by the arm and dragged him over to the other car while Pep was asking what Luís was doing. Sometimes subtlety just wasted time.

Thankfully, Xavi seemed to get it and shushed Gerard. Then he smiled reassuringly at a rather puzzled Kun. At the other car, Lionel hunched at the wheel and mumbled an apology for the state of his backseat.

Wasn’t really any different from what Luís would expect from a grad student. He told Lionel it wasn’t a problem, didn’t look at whatever he was kicking on the floor, and held Pep down till the seatbelts were strapped on and the car was moving.

“Ow,” Pep hissed, yanking his arm away. He opened his mouth, happened to glance forward and shut his mouth. Then he slouched down so he could mutter at Luís without it being visible in the rearview mirror. “What is the matter with you? What are you doing?”

Luís unbuttoned his collar. It was a hot day and he suspected that Lionel had the car’s windows cranked down because the car had no working A/C. “I’m sitting in a car with you. And then I think we’re going to stuff ourselves with grilled meat. It’s nice to see you acknowledging you have a stomach and bodily needs, by the way.”

“Don’t be facetious.” Pep shot Luís a glare, then raised his voice to ask how Andrés was. The other man replied that he was feeling better, but would probably stick with soup for dinner. For a moment Pep looked distressed and made soothing noises. Then he remembered about Luís and went back to looking irritated. “What are you planning?”

“A shower,” Luís answered. Then he gave up and just stripped off his suit-jacket. He’d only bothered because he thought at least one of them should look like they rated first-class, but clearly he didn’t have to worry about impressing people now. “Look, Pep, for the last time, I’m serious about changing careers. I’m just trying to do what I came here to do. Which is make sure you don’t die.”

Pep looked unconvinced. “Well, if that’s true, why all the sneaking around? And being rude to Kun?”

“Because we discussed it and mutually decided that it’d be better if I didn’t follow you around with a rifle?” Luís said. “If you changed your mind, I’m fine with not whispering for the rest of this conversation. And telling them I’m—”

“Um,” Lionel said, barely loud enough to be heard. “I can actually hear you anyway. Just…just so you know.”

Pep shut his mouth hard and sank lower in his seat. For the couple seconds his eyes showed before he slapped a hand over them, they were bulging. Then he rubbed the bridge of his nose. He squeezed it, sighed and dropped his hand to show a newly resolute expression. Luís started to object, then remembered how pointless that was when he couldn’t feasibly knock Pep out and drag him off to safety.

“I’m sorry, Leo,” Pep said. “I…well, haven’t been entirely truthful. You see…”

“We’re in a relationship,” Luís interrupted.

The frustrated look Pep gave him wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was how annoyed Luís was to have his suspicions confirmed that Pep had lied about that too. Which they hadn’t discussed beforehand—granted, that was because they’d both basically agreed on the point already, but if Pep was going to wave around the total sharing flag, it counted.

Lionel was quiet for a moment. “Oh. Um. Well, Xavi told me already.”

Pep made a noise like a cross between a squalling cat and a whimper. He jerked up, then down, and then set his jaw and sat up straight. His face was flaming red but he had that look in his eye that meant he had his principles and was about to jump the barricades with them. “Oh. All right. I’m—I’m sorry I didn’t mention it before, but I didn’t want you to think that I’m not taking the trip seriously. I am completely aware that this isn’t a vacation and I’m not going to put my personal—”

Luís couldn’t actually see Lionel, except for a bit of hair reflected in the rearview mirror, but he would’ve bet his next paycheck that the young man didn’t want to hear this. “Anyway, I am actually an expert in weapons and I’m here to help, not to drag Pep into dark corners. I think he’s good enough at that on his own anyway.”

A startled laugh came from Iniesta’s corner. Then he shifted sharply around and muttered an apology that Pep didn’t notice, busy as he was trying to kill Luís with his eyes. Lionel didn’t make any noises but the atmosphere in his direction seemed rather relieved.

“I’m going to have to have a word with Xavi,” Pep muttered, finally subsiding. He flipped out his mobile and started checking his messages.

“Are…are we supposed to not talk about it?” Lionel hesitantly ventured. “I mean, that you two are…”

Pep looked up distractedly. Then he grimaced as he realized the jam into which he’d just jumped, all limbs flailing. He chewed on his lip and didn’t look at Luís. “Well, it’s not a secret, really, but…like I said, we’re not here because of that. We’re here because we want to help.”

“Better that than waste time arguing about who’s got more in the back of the closet,” Luís said under his breath.

Of course Pep heard him. To be honest, Luís wasn’t embarrassed about being caught out. He probably should be, if only out of a sense of professionalism, but he was irritated and Pep was being dramatically unreasonable and the kids were staying quiet instead of making comments that Luís could use as subject segues. Frankly, Luís was beginning to think he should have stayed home and just sent Zlatan to keep an eye on Pep.

The last time he’d done that, Luís reminded himself, it’d apparently ended in Zlatan cohabitating with two high-maintenance Italian smugglers, only one of which could process an order without touching off unnecessary mayhem. Luís gritted his teeth and straightened up. He caught Iniesta peeking at the back via the rearview mirror and put on his best pleasant face. They’d just gotten off the plane, after all; when jet-lag caught up to Pep he’d probably calm down. They just had dinner to get through first.

* * *

“Eat up!” Cambiasso said cheerfully, plunking down yet another tray of skewered barbecue.

Luís looked dubiously at it. The meat had all _been_ delicious, but there were limits and as an intelligent man, he preferred to respect his. “I think I’m done, thank you.”

Cambiasso looked vaguely disappointed, but then he noticed the number of hands grabbing at the meat. He pushed the tray further down the table with a finicky flourish, then plopped down next to Luís with his own plate. “Well, if you’re sure. So you’re the weapons guy? Do you just look at them or—”

“I can use them,” Luís said calmly. He glanced to his other side, but Pep was still deep in discussion with Dr. Simeone about some ancient carving. “Why? Is that going to be needed?”

“Er, well…” After a look around, Cambiasso seemed to decide he didn’t need authorization to talk and rocked his hand in the universal sign for ‘maybe.’ “Probably, but nobody’s really gotten close enough to try it.”

Luís nudged his plate away and angled himself more in Cambiasso’s direction. “Really? People have seen it?”

Cambiasso shook his head. He picked up a chicken drumstick, tore off a long strip and chewed it down before he went on. “No, not really. There are some who say they have, but I think that’s mostly just their imagination acting up because they all have a different story. Nobody’s got much of an idea even how big it is. If you ask the PR people, they’ll tell you it’s about the size of a dog and is probably just a rabid one running loose, but that’s bullshit.”

“You think so,” Luís grinned. Cambiasso had been down as one of the people who’d discovered the dead body. He was also listed in the faculty as an assistant preservationist, whatever that meant, and had some amusing online photo albums. In person he seemed about as easygoing as he’d looked in the pictures. “What do you think it is?”

“No idea,” Cambiasso mumbled, gnawing at his bone. When he took the drumstick away, he had grease running down his chin. He took a moment to dig up a paper napkin and wipe at his face. “It’s bigger than a dog, though. The teeth are too big for that. And it can stand up like a man.”

Pep-check: still arguing about possible interpretations for a squiggle. Luís raised his brows at Cambiasso. “How do you figure that?”

The other man munched his chicken and gazed thoughtfully at Luís. Then he put down the drumstick and picked up his beer. “You’re not really an academic, are you?”

“How do you figure that?” Luís asked, in exactly the same tone.

“It’s okay. If you’re with Guardiola, you’re probably good people. And if you really do know about weapons, that should help because the police are being completely useless,” Cambiasso said with a shrug. He drank his beer and then shouted for somebody to hand him some pork. A heaped platter immediately came down and he stabbed at it with his fork. “It’s like they don’t understand we have valuable _artifacts_ in there and they can’t just storm the place without breaking something, and they can’t damn well let it starve to death because it might break something. I figured you’re not an academic because you didn’t make a tooth joke.”

Long experience had taught Luís that if he missed an inside joke and was called on it, it was a waste to time to pretend he actually had gotten it. He sat and waited for Cambiasso to get around to the punchline.

“Because what we say to each other is, we’re all just a way for teeth to make slightly different teeth.” Cambiasso grinned over a steaming hunk of barbecue pork. “After a really long time, teeth tend to be what’s left, right? So—”

“I see,” Luís said. Not really, but he wanted to get back to the damn monster. “So it’s at least as big as a man?”

The interruption and subject change didn’t really seem to faze Cambiasso, who just used the break to sip more beer. “Yeah, well, the teeth marks on the poor bastard who died came down from above.” He lifted his hand and then stabbed down with his fingers. “Maybe he was sitting down—I just know teeth, I don’t do that blood splatter reconstruction like on TV—but that’s still pretty damn tall.”

“I hope nobody else has gotten hurt,” Pep said.

Luís smoothed his twitch out into a shoulder roll. Then he turned and found Pep eyeing him; as soon as Pep knew he was caught, he turned to Cambiasso. Something hard and sneaker-like pressed down on Luís’ foot.

“No, not so far,” Cambiasso said. “We all go in groups, but it’s getting to be a problem. Right now there aren’t classes, so we can keep it quiet, but if we don’t wrap things up in a week, the PR people are going to have problems.”

“So what are you doing to—” Luís started.

Pep cleared his throat. He gave Luís a warning look, then started chatting to Cambiasso about what he’d been working on before the monster. Nice of him, but not that relevant to getting rid of the damn thing so they could all get on with their lives. Luís started looking around for an excuse to talk to someone else. Maybe Simeone, since they’d found the body in his office.

“—love to see that,” Pep said. Then he was pulling Luís out of his seat and across the lawn to see…

…well, given the bizarre statues in the back, quite a bit, but that was not why they were standing off from the group. “Why are you being antisocial?” Luís asked.

That threw Pep off his planned scolding. He blinked and shuffled his feet, and then remembered he’d called this little spat. “I’m not. Look, can you just…”

Luís waited.

Pep let the “just” trail out a few seconds. Then he pursed his lips and scrubbed his knuckles across the side of his face. He flipped his other hand meaninglessly around a few times. “Stop asking about the monster. That’s not what I’m here for, and that’s not what I told them you’re here for.”

“Well, I know, but I’m not _here_ to do what you told them I’m here to do,” Luís said after a moment. He honestly had no idea where this was coming from or going to, but he did know that letting Pep handle the steering was going to get them stuck up another mountainside fighting some megalomaniac’s hired guns. “I’m not trying to keep you from doing what you want, Pep. In fact, I’m going to stay as far away as possible from it. The whole point of me being here is to make sure you can do whatever you want, without interference. Like from a monster. Which I’m going to take care of. Starting with a few questions.”

“Right, let’s just have a modern-day big-game safari,” Pep muttered. He pinched the bridge of his nose and glowered at Luís over his fingers. “This isn’t Africa, this is a university in urban Argentina, and you’re not a professional hunter.”

“No, because now I’m _retired_ ,” Luís snapped. “Pep, I know what I’m doing.”

Pep rolled his eyes. His free hand had sneaked up to his hip and now the line of his body was clearly twanging attitude. “Yes, yes, I know, you _always_ know what you’re doing. But this is not your goddamn job. And anyway, you said you were just coming to make sure nothing happened to me.”

“Which is best done by getting rid of whatever’s running around terrorizing the place, so we don’t even have to worry about it.” Luís spun half-around in exasperation and ran his hand through his hair. He stared around the yard, trying to find some sense somewhere—because there certainly wasn’t any in Pep right now—and noticed Xavi staring at them. He turned back around and tried to stand so people couldn’t see Pep’s expressively frustrated face. “Look, just what are you objecting to here? You don’t want me to kill it? It could hurt someone else.”

“I know,” Pep snarled. Then he abruptly spun on his heel and stalked back to the picnic tables.

If anybody had really thought they were looking at the statuary, they knew better now. And if Luís had thought Pep was fine with him coming…he stared at Pep’s stiff back and told himself it’d just look worse if he went up and reminded the man that he’d had a chance to veto things before they’d gotten here.

Then Luís took a deep breath. He turned back around and looked at the statues again. Most of them were hopefully here for their historical value and not for their artistic merit, but there was one stone slab that was quite striking. It had a snake-like creature carved around its edge so the head came back to bite at the tail. Infinity. Or futility.

He was finding and killing this damn monster as fast as he could, Luís decided. That way, Pep could get down to arranging his project and then they’d have time for Luís to sort out Pep.

* * *

Zlatan thumbed his nose as he stared down at the corpse on the table. “They cleaned him up pretty well.”

The dead…parts were arranged in proper bodily order and had been rinsed off so they looked more like doctor’s props than real flesh and bone. It was still quite impressive damage. Cambiasso was right in there being no way a rabid dog had done it. “What does the report say?”

“Um…” After some poking around on the counter, Zlatan came up empty-handed. He frowned and stared around the room, pulling at his hair. Then he turned around and reached for the door. “Hang on, I’ll go ask.”

Luís hissed. When Zlatan turned back, Luís forwent the sigh of relief for a look of incredulity. “Ibra, what are you doing?”

“Gonna get the report you want?” Zlatan said, half-hopeful charm, half-belligerent bullshit.

“We broke in here! Just how exactly are you going to ask for it?” Luís snapped. He waited a few seconds. When the best Zlatan could come up with was a blank look of innocence, Luís rolled his eyes and got a box of gloves off the counter. He didn’t have any formal training in forensic science, but he’d gotten enough of an experiential education to know his way around a human body and most common causes of death. “Zlatan. Threatening people and then knocking them out is _not_ asking.”

Zlatan looked wounded. “I know that! I was going to—”

“And this isn’t a commission either. I’m doing this for private reasons and you’re hiding from Nesta. So nobody’s going to reimburse you for the bribe.” Luís found some surgical masks and tossed one to Zlatan before putting another on himself. Then he hunted up some forceps and probes, and positioned himself by the—by what had been the head. He held up a probe by a deep cut and gauged the length, then whistled silently behind the mask. Damn big. “Never mind. It’s not like we need to know why he died.”

“Well, don’t we? If we’re going to kill this thing?” Zlatan asked. He reluctantly edged up by Luís, gloveless. Then he tried to scratch his nose through the mask, failed miserably and settled for looking irked. “And I’m not hiding from Nesta. I’m just…taking a break from his fucking _whining_. Jesus, all the time, over everything, like…”

“We don’t because we know why he died,” Luís muttered quickly, before he could get the details. He handed Zlatan a probe to give the man something to do, then had to take it back when Zlatan tried to use it to clean under his nails. “Something carved up his head. What we need to know is—”

For some reason Zlatan now wanted the probe back. He tried to get at it a couple times, then huffed and stalked over to put on some gloves. Then he came back and flashed his gloved hands like he’d just invented a cure for cancer. “Hey, just because they’re the biggest gashes doesn’t mean they’re what killed the guy. Haven’t you seen any TV recently? It’s always something else, like they poisoned him first or whatever.”

Luís paused, then took the forceps and probe out of the head. He looked at Zlatan, then looked at the body. Deep lacerations raked up and down the corpse, ending in a distinctive four-fingered claw-mark that had punctured the skull in places.

“Well, it could’ve happened!” Zlatan insisted. “If he’d pissed off somebody, and they…maybe knew the monster was out, and drugged him so he couldn’t run. Something like that.”

“Even if that was the case, that’s not what we need to know. Let me rephrase,” Luís said carefully. “We don’t need to know exactly why he died. Because I don’t really care. He’s dead. It’s very sad for his family and friends, but doesn’t really affect me.”

Zlatan jerked around like Luís had just told him the moon was on fire. “Then what the fuck are we doing in the city morgue? Did you just have me waste a whole afternoon figuring out how to get into this dump?”

“No.” Luís went back to probing in one of the head gashes, where he’d seen something that wasn’t the right color for bone. When the probe hit it, the tip stopped like it was solid material. He worked the probe and forceps around the object till he could ease it out. “We’re here because I need to know how to kill whatever gave him these claw-marks. Mostly, I need to know how big it is so I know what kind of gun and bullet to bring.”

“Okay, but I still think it’d help if we knew other things, like how fast it is, and whether it’s poisonous,” Zlatan said after a moment. The mask kept Luís from seeing the man’s mulish expression, but the disgusted way Zlatan cocked his shoulders and hips more than made up for that. “I mean, didn’t you say that the cardinal rule was research your target? How are we going to find this thing if we don’t know anything about it?”

“I never said we were going to not know anything about it,” Luís said. The bit he’d pulled out of the skull was yellower than bone would be and a little springy: he could bend it slightly if he pressed the end against the table. It’d come off of something bigger, as its ragged edges attested. Probably a piece of a claw. “That’s why I wanted to see the report. It’d be helpful with that.”

Zlatan threw up his hands. “For what? You just said never mind!”

“Because, Ibra, poking around in a dead body is not the only damned way you can research something that can kill people, and autopsy reports are generally all about why someone died, not how. That’s why you don’t just have an autopsy report at trial, but need the murder weapon too. What the autopsy report says is this person died because his skull was fractured here and he’s missing a body part here and so on.” Luís wedged the claw back into the gash, as close to where he’d found it as he could put it. Hopefully whenever the actual forensic investigators looked at it, they’d just assume it’d gotten knocked loose in transit. “What it doesn’t say is—”

“—he died because something with big fucking claws got him from behind and then ran off?” Zlatan said. His mask moved slightly upwards as his smirk raised his cheekbones. “I did get the report on the scene. There’s not a lot, but somebody sketched the blood spatters and it looks like he got jumped. Yeah, I was going to give it to you, but you were all cranky and wanted to come straight here.”

As a matter of fact, Luís was still cranky and the reminder of why he was didn’t help. Neither did Zlatan bouncing on his heels like the overeager puppy he devoutly believed he wasn’t, but Zlatan was finally starting to act like help. “Anything else in it?”

“Not really. They found a broken ceiling tile and figured that that’s where the thing came in, but said there weren’t any bits of it left behind. No fur or blood or whatever. Couldn’t track it.” Zlatan paused and thought. “And that there was a funny smell, but it’s hot and that body had been there at least an hour, according to Dr. Simeone.”

“All right.” Nothing else about the corpse jumped out at Luís, so he washed the probes off in the sink and put them in the tray labeled for dirty instruments. Then he stripped off his gloves and mask. “Well, I think we’re done for now.”

Zlatan blinked. “Crime scene now?”

“No. Hotel room,” Luís said. When the other man started looking stubbornly confused, Luís bit back his sigh and took off one of Zlatan’s gloves. “Zlatan. What we know so far is that this thing is big, strong and kills people. And it might be smart enough to surprise them from behind so it doesn’t get hurt. So why, exactly, am I going to break into a large unfamiliar building at night where I know this thing has been? Before I know how I’m going to kill it?”

“Then what are you doing?” Zlatan asked, irked. He yanked his hands away and then stripped off the other glove and his mask. “Researching?”

Luís rolled his eyes. “Well, yes. Because that’s what you should do.”

“ _How_?” Zlatan demanded, craning down to nearly butt heads with Luís.

“It’s a monster. Which apparently came from an archaeological dig. Obviously, there’s going to be some myth or hieroglyphic scroll or other ancient thing that tells us all about it. And that I don’t have to look at while I’m in a morgue or trying to make sure the thing doesn’t come after me,” Luís said with a sigh. He rubbed at his hands; the gloves had been powdered, which had combined with his sweat to leave whitish streaks all over his knuckles. “Really, don’t you watch movies?”

Zlatan stayed as he was for a few more seconds, bent down so close that his eyes were crossing from trying to focus on Luís. His mouth was thinned out and the lips slightly drawn back so a hint of teeth could be seen. “Sometimes I really hate you.”

“I know,” Luís grinned. He gave Zlatan’s hair a ruffle, swerved around the other man while he was trying to bat that off, and headed for the door. “Anyway, I’d think you’d want to catch up on your sleep before we go after this thing. It looks like it’ll be hard enough to handle without poison.”

“Yeah, if Sandro doesn’t call again,” Zlatan muttered, following Luís out. “He was so hacked off at me being there, don’t know why he’s so mad about me leaving.”

Luís considered asking just what was the problem. He might hate getting involved in other people’s affairs, but if it was bothering Zlatan that much, it’d be better to get the man settled before they got to anything requiring weapons. But then Zlatan pulled out his phone. The other man looked at who was calling, made a face and thumbed to answer it with a look on his face that clearly said no talking. So Luís let it go for the moment. They had to get out without being seen anyway, and that was hard enough without Zlatan’s misconception of what ‘secrecy’ meant. Why did Zlatan even have his phone on?

“I can’t turn it off now,” Zlatan hissed. “He’ll just call back.”

“Give me—” Luís yanked the phone from Zlatan. “Nesta? It’s Figo. We’re busy and as a fellow professional you should know better than to interrupt. Call him back in a half-hour.”

Then Luís handed it back to Zlatan, whose expression was warring between awed and…and apprehension?

“That was Paolo, actually,” Zlatan said.

Luís stopped walking for a moment. Then he shook his head. He’d just have to deal with it when he got home. After Larsson, and Zinedine, and right now killing that monster really was starting to look like a vacation.

* * *

When Luís eased into his hotel room, it was dark and nothing was moving. He turned around to shut the door and the light went on. He stiffened, then finished locking the door.

By the time he turned to the bed, typing noises had filled the air. Pep was sitting up on the bed, laptop on top of the sheets, determinedly not looking at Luís. “Have a nice walk?” he asked.

“You’d sound more airy if you weren’t mad at me,” Luís said. He took off his jacket and tossed it over a nearby chair, then walked into the bathroom. It was a humid night and he needed a couple splashes of water to the face. Second best after a good stiff drink, but he suspected that would go over even more poorly.

When he came back out, Pep had given up on the laptop and was just staring at him, arms crossed over chest, silently willing Luís to feel guilty. Luís sat down on the bed and began to take off his shoes.

“Well, I don’t usually try to sound airy,” Pep finally said.

“No, usually you ask if we can talk about it, so I’m not really sure why you’re suddenly changing tactics. You’re not terribly good at faking it and I’m not particularly gullible,” Luís muttered. He was completely aware that he sounded snide and that that wasn’t going to help either, but frankly, he was tired and could still smell the morgue on himself. And normally he didn’t have other people around when he came home from something like the morgue visit.

Pep exhaled loudly. The sheets rustled, then rustled even louder. Then Pep crawled up on Luís’ right side and looked Luís in the eye. “Where did you go?”

“I didn’t have a sexual encounter or cause any trouble that might result in you getting deported or your friends being put in danger,” Luís replied after a moment. He dropped his shoes on the floor, then bent over to pull off his socks.

“That’s not answering my question. We can’t talk if I’m the only one doing it. Discussion is consensual by definition,” Pep snapped. The mattress moved as if he was going to lunge at Luís, but when Luís jerked up, he found Pep just slumping back, hands rubbing over his face. Pep mumbled something, then dragged his hands back over the top of his head and clasped them behind his neck. He’d wiped off the irritation and now looked at Luís with an unstudied glumness that was much more effective at manipulating something like regret out of Luís. “Is it that bad?”

“No.” Then Luís sighed and tossed down his socks. He turned to fully face Pep. “Well, I’m not sure. Just how much of what I do is all right for you to hear?”

Pep crossed his arms over his chest again, but this time it seemed to be because he was cold. The hotel air-conditioning was blowing mightily in the corner, and as usual, Pep had just doubled up on t-shirts rather than turn the thermostat up or put on a jacket. Sometimes Luís wondered if the other man thought he had to keep from imposing his needs on inanimate objects, too. 

“You know, when we met, I did ask you to basically do whatever was possible to help out Cesc and his friends,” Pep said after a long moment. A hint of a smile tugged at his mouth, then was gone in the blink of an eye. He scratched at his collar, dragging it down so Luís could a bit of collarbone, which jutted too damn far out even if it was absurdly tempting. “I’m not naïve, all right? I hold certain ideals about the world, but…well, it’s not like I’ve reported you.”

“No, but that could just be the sex,” Luís said, off-hand.

For some reason that hit a tender spot in the other man. Pep flinched, then reached out and grabbed Luís’ arm. He pulled at it so hard that he ended up dragging himself off and had to put another hand down to keep his balance. “It is _not_ the sex. Is that what you think? Is that why you won’t tell—”

“Pep, for God’s sake, I was just looking into the monster, all right? I didn’t tell you at first because we fought over it at dinner and I didn’t want to rehash that at this hour,” Luís sighed.

Cut off mid-passionate declaration, Pep wobbled dangerously for a few seconds. Then he regripped Luís’ thigh and settled back on his heels. “That’s…that’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it. Not glamorous, but that’s part of the dirty truth.” Luís shrugged. “I don’t like fighting with you, so I duck questions. Sorry.”

Pep absorbed that. He started to say something, rethought it, and chewed at his lip for a few more seconds. Then he shook his head, which also shook Luís since they were still connected at arm and leg. “I’m just trying to talk about—”

“Argue,” Luís said.

“Have a spirited dialogue,” Pep retorted. He held the indignant pose for a moment before a relieved, amused smile cracked it. His hand slid up Luís’ arm to Luís’ shoulder, then affectionately brushed through Luís’ hair before coming off. “I’m sorry about dinner. I was overreacting. It’s not that I don’t want you to help, but you have to understand that I’m just here as guest faculty, and you’re here as my guest. It’s still their university.”

Luís raised his brows. “Which somehow means I can’t go after the monster that’s killing them?”

“No, no, you can, but you have to respect—” Exhaling in frustration, Pep twisted his head away. He held it down, then lifted it again to show importuning eyes. “It’s just a matter of making sure you—we don’t just barge in and take over. Yes, they have a problem, but it’s not out of control yet and it’s not threatening the entire world like with El Siete’s tower. So you can’t just act like you’re in charge. If you do you’ll offend people and academics are…a little defensive about their authority.”

Translated from Pep’s tactful phrasing, read ‘academics are irrationally territorial bastards and can’t stand to find out they’re not the big shots they think they are.’ To be completely honest, Pep had already informed Luís of that, although he hadn’t done it in words. “Well, I wasn’t researching in their library, so you can tell them they don’t need to piss in the corners to re-mark the place,” Luís said dryly.

Pep wasn’t amused. “I’m serious. We’re only here in the first place because they invited me, and I don’t want to make things difficult for Leo.”

“I know. I’m being serious too.” Luís started to scoot back on the bed and felt his phone dig into his hip. He pulled that out of his pocket, put it on the table and then swung his legs onto the bed. “Believe me, Pep, it’s a common attitude in most professions.”

“I’ve noticed,” Pep said, looking steadily at Luís.

An hour and a half in Zlatan’s company had temporarily numbed Luís’ sensitivity to blunt sarcasm. Luís just undid his belt buckle and pulled his shirt-tails out of his jeans. Then he looked down at his thigh. “At any rate, I’m done for the night, so you don’t need that.” He waited for Pep to flush and yank off his hand, which had somehow still remained on Luís’ leg. “Unless you had that there for something else.”

Pep’s ability to deal with flirting fluctuated with how focused he was on getting something done. He was at his most awkward when that something he was doing happened to be replying to the flirting, but he usually still managed to stay game for it. “Well, if you’re sure you’re not going to run off again,” he said.

He sounded a little sharp, Luís thought. But then Pep had climbed onto Luís’ lap and was fiddling around with Luís’ belt, and Luís forgot about it. He watched Pep—still pinked around the cheekbones—make an elbow-y production out of removing the belt and pushing it off the bed. “It’s completely the sex,” Luís said.

Pep glanced up, then shoved irritably at Luís. He paused, then shoved harder, so Luís went down on his back. A pillow caught Luís’ head and left shoulder, propping him up so he had a good view of Pep’s determined assault on Luís’ shirt. “Yes, obviously,” Pep muttered, yanking at buttons. “You’re so enchanted by my prowess in bed that you gave up a globe-trotting and very lucrative career to sneak around my house and rearrange my damn cutlery—”

It might not make Luís a very good man, but he truly did find annoyed Pep attractive. Very attractive, what with the flashing eyes and determined set of the jaw, and sudden angry grace of the man. But sometimes Pep’s phrasing—Luís snorted at ‘prowess,’ waited for Pep’s head to come up again and then caught the man’s head between his mouth and the hand he wrapped around the back of Pep’s head.

After a moment Pep dissolved into the kiss, his fingers going slack and flat against Luís’ chest. He’d gotten Luís’ shirt half-open and his palms were warm where they lapped from fabric to skin. His mouth was warmer but not unpleasantly so, hard where it should be and soft where Luís wanted to touch with his tongue and lips.

“You had three unopened knife sets and the ones you were using were so dull I couldn’t cut the butter with them,” Luís told the man when they came up for air. “I should ask you what kind of man has that many cutlery sets around.”

“Unfortunate promotion and housewarming gifts,” Pep muttered impatiently, pushing down again. He pressed his mouth to the corner of Luís’ mouth, then slid it down the edge of Luís’ jaw. His hands took up the remaining buttons of Luís’ shirt with much more precision and urgency. “I was _used_ to the old ones, and you didn’t tell me. I nearly cut off a finger with the new ones.”

Luís still wasn’t quite there, amusement dulling his lust, but he moved his hands to the backs of Pep’s thighs to pull the other man closer. Pep was just wearing boxers and they were baggy enough so that Luís could stick his fingers in them nearly up to the crotch. He brushed the side of Pep’s prick and Pep twisted sharply, head coming up and eyes wide with surprise. Then he bent his body into it, tucking his head into the side of Luís’ neck. The breath rising from his gasps tickled the underside of Luís’ chin.

Just a little thing, something Luís shouldn’t have noticed next to Pep’s hands resting on his waistband, Pep’s knee pressing up into Luís’ own groin, but it did more for Luís’ interest than any of that. He pulled his hand out of Pep’s boxers—Pep hissed at him—then pushed those over Pep’s hips and out of the way. Pep stopped hissing and started laving the base of Luís’ neck. For all his complaints about inconvenient hickeys, he left his fair share.

They rolled over in a kind of mutual wrestle, but then Luís dragged them back the other way, remembering which bedside table had the complimentary bottle of lotion on it. Along the way his jeans ended up around his knees and became annoying restrictions on his movement. He had to bump Pep a bit to do it, but he finally managed to kick them off. And get the lotion. And have Pep nip at a nipple. Luís jerked and looked down to find Pep looking decidedly smug. “Well, the sex isn’t decisive, but it is a plus,” Pep said.

“You are—if you can talk like that, I’m not doing this right,” Luís muttered.

Pep snorted but the snort turned into a long, surprised moan thanks to the hand Luís slid up the inside of the man’s left thigh. Lashes fluttering wildly, Pep clutched at Luís’ arm and waist and arched. He showed a clean bowed line from the point of his chin down his throat and chest to the hip rising into Luís’ cupped fingers. Luís had to watch.

Then Luís shook his head and stuck the lotion bottle’s cap between his teeth. He twisted that off one-handed, flicked the damn cap away and flipped the bottle so the open end vaguely pointed towards his palm. The lotion came out in a flood and probably got all over the sheets as well as Luís’ hand and shirt, but he wasn’t really concerned about that just at the moment. He pushed Pep down on the bed, then held the man there with one hand on one hip and his mouth fixed just behind Pep’s ear. Pep slapped at his back, then scratched his nails in lopsided zigzags across it.

Those nails dug in when Luís nudged his slicked fingers up between Pep’s legs. He was in a hurry and went with two fingers—too much, said Pep’s sudden twist away, and despite the need viciously pulling apart Luís’ insides, Luís pulled back one finger. Pep rewarded him with a hard bite on the shoulder and a sharp jerk of the hips that had Luís’ finger deep in the other man before Luís was really ready for it. Luís hissed like it’d gone into him and Pep just dropped back his head, looked up with hazy eyes and slack parted lips. A sliver of tongue flicked around just behind those lips.

Luís chased the tease back into Pep’s mouth. Two fingers and Pep ground his teeth into Luís’ lips, moaning. Three and Pep was smacking Luís’ hip like he was some—Luís didn’t finish the thought, mostly because he was busy taking out his fingers and bracing his knees. 

“You bastard,” Pep groaned at him. “You goddamn bastard, you always—”

He pushed himself down as Luís pushed himself up and they came together. Pep stopped talking. He pulled his hand once over Luís’ back, drawing stinging sweat into the scratches his nails had left, then hauled on Luís’ shoulders as if he was dragging them up through an ocean for air. Luís didn’t really need the help but he wasn’t going to fight it, not when it was rocking _perfectly_ in time with—

The first bang Luís didn’t really hear, but the second one came along with a distinct, if muffled, yell to stop fucking and go fuck themselves. Which didn’t make sense—Luís wasn’t entirely sure why he needed things to make sense. Neither was Pep, judging by his confused expression, but then Pep snickered. He didn’t have the breath for it and was gasping before he’d half-finished, but the snicker turned into a full-blown laugh and he was jerking and twitching around Luís, face buried in Luís’ shoulder, coming hard and laughing through it.

One of the last squeezes of his body around Luís’ cock was enough to bring Luís over the edge, though that edge wasn’t quite as high as it could’ve been. Or that he would’ve liked it to be, but as he raised himself off Pep and swiped sweaty hair out of his eyes, he couldn’t be too critical. Pep was still giggling, his ankles crossed loosely behind Luís’ legs, his arms looped over Luís neck and his eyes bright with a very unacademic glee. He looked wonderful, and he looked like something that was making Luís’ chest hurt a little.

“If you’d let me have your laptop a minute longer, I could’ve done something about the hotel booking too,” Luís finally managed to say.

“My God, and Xavi’s on the other side,” Pep said. He was embarrassed but not so much that he couldn’t still grin. “I don’t know how I’m going to face him at breakfast.”

Luís propped himself up on an elbow. They needed to wash up before things got stickily uncomfortable, but maybe in a minute. “I don’t have to be there, if that’d help.”

Pep’s grin faded. He looked hard up at Luís. Then his finger touched Luís’ cheek. Just the tip, as light as a feather, but it lingered. “I’m not ashamed of you,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to lie about you.”

“But there’s a little more to it than being embarrassed by me. And anyway, we did talk about that and come to an agreement,” Luís said. “I’m fine with not having to deal with awkward questions about my past. In fact, I’d prefer it.”

“Even with me?” Pep asked. His voice had thinned out a little, and he looked oddly fragile lying there, with his doubled t-shirts rucked up his chest and soaked through.

After a moment, Luís eased himself out of and off the other man. Pep barely hitched as they came apart. Then he rolled over, his eyes never leaving Luís.

“Where’d you go?” he asked.

“I looked at the body,” Luís said. He rubbed at his nose. “The man who was killed. To see if it’d help me figure out how to kill the thing. Is that what you wanted to know?”

Pep was silent. It became clear he wasn’t going to reply, so Luís got off the bed and went into the bathroom to wash himself off. A minute later he heard a noise at the door and held out a damp towel for Pep without looking. Then he finished wiping himself down and went back into the bedroom to consider the sheets.

The comforter was a loss but it looked like they’d missed the sheets underneath that. Luís rolled up the comforter and left it on the couch, then turned down the air-conditioning. Then he got under the sheets and closed his eyes. He opened them, feeling the mattress dip, and saw Pep sitting on the edge and looking at him. Pep started to part his lips, then shook his head and just laid down next to Luís. He started off on his back, but turned onto his side and faced Luís barely a minute later. He was right by Luís but they weren’t touching and finally Luís pushed out his arm, wedging it under the other man. Pep let out a noise that might’ve been a sigh or just a puff of breath. He rolled closer and put his head on Luís’ shoulder. That settled, Luís went to sleep.

* * *

Lionel and his friend Kun showed up the next morning to join them for breakfast, which distracted Pep from saying or doing anything that might reveal he was having fits of insecurity. Luís took advantage of the other man’s preoccupation to scroll through his messages. Larsson still wasn’t happy but he’d put things off till Luís got back, Zinedine wanted to know if Luís had asked Pep what was wrong—Luís hid his eye-roll in his coffee—and Zlatan was having issues getting blueprints of the university. Just about where things had stood last night.

“Want some honey?”

“Pardon?” Then Luís suppressed his grimace for a polite smile at Xavi. He reached out for the jar while covertly sliding his phone back into his pocket. “Thanks.”

Xavi waved it off and attacked his plate with gusto. “So you sleep all right?” he mumbled through a healthy mouthful.

After a moment, Luís picked up his knife and fork. He speared a piece of pork onto his plate and started cutting it apart. “Once we turned down the air. It’s hot as hell outside but I don’t think that that requires resorting to Antarctica.”

“Fuck, I wish I’d had that problem,” Xavi said, grinning. He glanced up and down the table, then snagged a bun and tore off a corner. “Mine kept going out. The knob is loose, or something…I had to keep getting up and turning it back on.”

“Did you tell the staff?” Luís asked absently. His phone was vibrating and in his hurry he’d shoved it at an awkward angle into his jeans. If he didn’t get to it in a minute, it was going to fall out onto the floor.

Xavi nodded. “Yeah, they said they’d send somebody to fix it while we were out today. Aside from that it’s a really good room—in the corner and everything, so you don’t get bothered much with noise.”

At this rate Luís was never going to get a piece of food into his mouth. But better starve than let some fresh grad student mock him. “About last night.”

“If you want to switch, I’d be okay with it,” Xavi added over Luís. He bit off more of the bun, wiggled his brows in the universal sign for surprisingly good and then started to eye the basket one over, which still had buns in it. “I can sleep through pretty much anything anyway—I mean, noises. Waking up over and over in a pool of sweat was really irritating.”

Luís rapidly revised his tactics; no point in calling the man out now. And Xavi did seem sincere about the offer, with not even a hint of amusement in his voice. He’d sounded just like he had when he’d offered Luís the honey. “Thanks. I’ll ask Pep and get back to you.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Xavi said, looking mildly horrified. Then he paused to elbow Gerard and tell him to hand down the buns. He turned back to Luís and leaned forward furtively—Pep was half out of his chair and facing the other way, talking loudly on the phone to somebody at the university—to stare Luís seriously in the eye. “Just move his stuff. I’ll swap cards with you, and when he goes to the door, you tell him he probably forgot which room it was. He’ll buy it.”

Aside from that high-speed car chase down a Barcelona highway, Luís’ interactions with Xavi had consisted of a couple minutes’ idle chitchat a few times while waiting for Pep in his office. Back in Spain Pep had generally left Luís to his own devices during the day, and Luís had tried to return the favor, only coming into the university when it seemed like Pep had forgotten he needed to leave there once in a while for basic needs. Clearly that had been an oversight and Luís needed somebody to pull files on Pep’s regular staff immediately.

“We do that sometimes to get him to eat,” Xavi added after a check on Pep. “One of us just says that he must’ve forgotten about the lunch and he asks what lunch, and we make up some promise that he was going to take us out. Though obviously we pay for ourselves.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Luís finally said. He got in some food while he could and chewed it slowly, washing it down with a good shot of coffee. “And here I was going to ask if that was something he tended to do a couple times a semester too.”

Xavi had an excellent memory. He didn’t look confused for a second about the reference and instead skipped straight to vicariously indignant. “ _No_. No, mother of God, no, Pep’s not like that at all. He’s very loyal. And…and honestly? Before you, he hadn’t gone out socially in forever. It’s actually a relief that he’s got somebody. Well, he went to poetry readings and things like that, but not _with_ any—”

“I know, I know, bad joke,” Luís hastily interrupted. To his ear it sounded like Pep was winding up his call and Luís devoutly did not want to have to _discuss_ this kind of discussion. “So what’s on the agenda today, do you know?”

“Oh, we’re going to meet Dr. Simeone at the university and go see the stele.” The buns came Xavi’s way and he dumped half a dozen onto his plate before drizzling honey over the whole pile. “The stele? Did you hear Pep and Dr. Simeone talking about it last night?”

After a moment’s thought, Luís vaguely recalled a conversation that he hadn’t exactly been taking notes on at the time. “Really? It’s worth all the fuss of getting in while this thing is loose?”

Xavi blinked. “Well, yeah. It’s what we figure tells the creation legend about whatever it is, so either we see it or we send somebody out to the pampas dig to see why nobody’s answering their phones. Actually, I think they already did, but that’s going to take a week at least to get there.”

“Ah,” Luís said, as if the light had dawned on him. Then he excused himself from the table and went out to the lobby.

Zlatan’s line was busy the first two times Luís tried it. Probably just well; Luís needed to update him but he also badly needed to reaffirm that he was, in fact, an experienced veteran of stressful environments who did not get careless. And he probably needed to do that first.

*Did you ask him what’s wrong?* Raúl asked.

Luís gazed at the hotel entrance. A large family had just arrived and the harassed bellhop was trying to keep two small children from toppling a decorative plant while a third child demanded candy. “Did Zinedine call you?”

*No. Well, not about that. He called to ask if I could get David to do something about Albelda, and then I wanted to know why he’s worried about you having problems with handling Albelda, and—*

“Albelda?” Luís asked.

*Oh. Right. He’s somewhere in Argentina this week. It’s nothing to do with you but Zinedine and David both seem to think that Albelda might still be irritated at you.* In the background someone snapped that he didn’t just think that and Raúl asked them if he could finish the call, please. *I know, it wasn’t really your fault Quique was being difficult, but I think Albelda and Flores are fighting again and you know Quique, he doesn’t let Albelda be pissed off at him.”

“No, he runs off to Portugal and gets in Rui’s hair.” Another item Luís didn’t need added to his list. Actually, two—why on earth would Zinedine ever think he’d have problems dealing with Albelda? A couple disagreements with Pep didn’t automatically mean Luís had lost all sense of clear and present danger.

Speaking of which, there was Pep crossing the lobby, looking like he’d just caught Luís making time with a brothel’s star attraction while having a spiritual crisis of faith. Luís told Raúl thanks for the warning and hung up. Then he held out his mobile towards Pep.

Pep glanced at it, uncomprehending. Then he got it. He opened his mouth, closed it, and finally just stood there and stared slightly to the left of Luís. “Kun and Leo went to get the cars. We’ll be going in a few minutes.”

“All right,” Luís said.

For the next few minutes, Pep shifted around in place and fiddled with his watch, his phone, his earlobe. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, and generally looked like he wanted to blurt out something unpleasant.

“Xavi heard us,” Luís finally said. He winced, then temporarily gave up on the dignified approach. “He suggested we switch rooms with him. I think it’s a good idea, what do you think?”

Pep’s eyes had bugged out alarmingly far, but thankfully retracted just as swiftly. He coughed into his hand, then scrubbed his knuckles over a flushed cheek. “That’s…that’s very nice of him to offer.”

“It’s a good thing it doesn’t just come down to that, or else I’d have some problems with how…thoughtful your staff is,” Luís muttered. Then he snorted and turned away. “God knows I had to kick some asses to keep my colleagues from trying to get a peek at you. I didn’t drag you out of a man-eating temple just to have everybody get in on it.”

“What?” Pep asked, stuttering a bit with incredulity. Though when Luís turned back, Pep was—well, still heartily embarrassed but mostly out of humility. That look in his eyes certainly wasn’t dismay at the compliment.

They kept looking at each other for some reason. All right, to be honest, Luís was looking because blushing Pep was a beautiful thing, but it wasn’t exactly the same on Pep’s end. He was staring at Luís like…

…somebody called their names. Gerard at the door, pointing outside. The cars were here.

Luís immediately turned towards him; Pep lingered. But when Luís looked back, Pep had started forward so Luís didn’t get a clear view of the man’s expression. So they headed out.

* * *

“Gruesome,” Gerard said, in a half-admiring way.

Pep squatted down by the stele and peered at it, penlight in hand. “I don’t think these are entrails,” he informed them. “I think it’s part of the inscription.”

Dr. Simeone’s grouchy expression turned marginally more sour. “It’d make no sense to put one there. The name of the god is already on the left side, and the main text is on the other side.”

“Well, this is your area but the incisions just seem very organized to me,” Pep said diplomatically. He rocked back on his heels and looked blandly up at Dr. Simeone.

Xavi took a step back, realized Luís had seen it and grimaced. He edged over to Luís and hooked his thumb over his shoulder, where Pep had progressed to gesturing at a stone-faced Dr. Simeone. “Don’t get into that,” he muttered to Luís.

“I wasn’t planning to, believe me.” 

Luís had been looking around the warehouse in which they were standing. He had taken a look at the stele, and it was very impressive: a single slab of rock nearly as tall as a man, with one side completely covered in intricate carvings. The operative word there being ‘intricate,’ as Luís had quickly given up on trying to follow Pep’s explanations about what belonged to a sacred snake and what was not actually a leg with two feet but just an artist’s attempt to represent three-dimensional motion in a flat plane, and what was just a weird bump. The stele might be critical to identifying what they were up against, but Luís saw no reason not to wait till the real experts had come up with a definitive interpretation.

Besides, the warehouse itself had plenty to interest him. According to a mumble from Lionel, it’d once been a giant holding barn for cattle on their way to slaughter and its origins showed in the heavy stonework and the slit windows that let in mere wisps of sunlight. Modernization had done its best, but the electric lighting still left large swaths in deep shadow. Crates of all sizes and shapes poked out of the rows of shelves so no matter how Luís turned, he couldn’t get a clear line of sight to a wall.

To be honest it made him edgy, even though Dr. Simeone had assured them that a team had swept the place and made sure it was clear. They also all had been given machetes—Pep had shoved his at Luís to hold the moment he’d seen the stele—and Gerard and Lionel both had flamethrowers. And of course Luís hadn’t come in just relying on others’ defensive measures, but nevertheless he would not like to have to marshal a retreat from the building. Or an attack.

A grating noise stirred Luís out of his thoughts. He looked to the right and saw Gerard and Lionel poking around a huge open crate. It was tall enough so that Gerard didn’t have to duck his head as he stepped inside, and Gerard was about able to look Zlatan in the eye.

“I think that that’s what it came in,” Xavi said, stepping past Luís for a closer look. “The monster, I mean.”

That left only Luís, Kun, Dr. Simeone and Pep at the stele, and Kun was also looking more interested in the crate than the carvings. Dr. Simeone and Pep were now at the stage of jabbing fingers at each other, so Luís reluctantly stayed put so their backs weren’t left unprotected.

“Hey, Leo, I thought you said they didn’t open it before it got out,” Gerard said from inside the crate.

Lionel prodded at the side of his crate with his foot. He was staring somberly out at the rest of the warehouse, holding tightly onto his flamethrower. “That’s what I heard.” 

“Then how’d it get out? It doesn’t look like it broke anything from the inside,” Gerard asked.

Kun gave the arguing professors a last glance, then hopped over. “It did, but they cleaned that up and took all the scraps away. That’s why the whole side is missing. Did they clean out the insides too, or are there scales or something like that?”

Xavi bent down and ran his finger along the bottom of the crate. “I think these might be scratch marks.”

“Yeah?” Gerard folded up his gangly limbs and took a look. He measured them with his hand, then held that up for Kun and Xavi to see. As far as Luís could tell, it matched with his own measurements. “Christ, that’s big.”

“I don’t think that’s from it,” Lionel said quietly. He’d gone round the back of the crate but now came back clutching what appeared to be a piece of paper in a laminated envelope. When the others looked at him, he flinched and then held out the paper almost apologetically. “The invoice says it’s supposed to be a big statue, with stone and pottery parts.”

Kun looked skeptical. “It wasn’t a statue that mauled that guy.”

“I know, but…” Lionel fell silent and looked at the ground.

Xavi frowned thoughtfully. Then he knelt back down and put his face nearly against the floor. “Huh. No, Leo’s right. These scratches are crossing all over each other. It’s too irregular to be from toes or claws.”

“What happened to the statue?” Gerard asked, amiably accepting the reversal.

Meanwhile, Dr. Simeone had just said something to make Pep tighten his lips. The last time Pep had stared at someone like that, he’d just stopped a stone head from eating Luís and wanted to know why the hell Luís had handcuffed him to a plane.

Lionel fiddled around with the paper. “Um. Doesn’t say. This is just the invoice.”

“I don’t think they took it out,” Kun said. “I just heard there was a bunch of trash left over from it breaking out that they dumped.”

“Is the trash still around?” Xavi queried. “Maybe there are bits of the statue in it.”

Scandalized on Kun made him look like a pop-eyed koala. “Excuse me? We would never throw that kind of thing away! Okay, there’s a monster running around, but we haven’t forgotten who we are and that we have duties as—as guardians of history—and—”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t—that’s not what I meant at all, I’m really sorry,” Xavi said, holding his hands out palms-first. “No, no, I just…I was thinking, it’s still supposed to be a big animal, right? So how is it and this statue supposed to both fit in here? This crate’s pretty tall but it’s barely big enough for me and Gerard.”

“What’s going on over there?” Dr. Simeone snapped, twisting away from the stele.

Lionel and Kun both did the physical equivalent of an eep, while Luís got the distinct impression that Gerard was perfectly happy being in the box. Xavi just stood there and shrugged. “Maybe the monster was in the statue?” he said diffidently.

“What statue?” Pep asked, getting to his feet. “There was a statue? I thought it was the monster and this stele.”

Dr. Simeone still looked like he was chewing on his own liver, but Luís caught his eye and with an effort, the man pulled back his shoulders. “There was supposed to be a statue in that too, but by the time we got a look inside, all we found was a bunch of broken pieces of wood from the crate. They must’ve mislabeled it.”

“There were plenty of moving stone things in El Siete’s tower,” Luís remarked.

Pep turned and looked hard at him. Then Pep spun on his heel and stared at the crate. He grabbed at the top of his head and ground his knuckles into the stubbly hair there.

“What moving stone things?” Dr. Simeone demanded.

“Let’s go look at those wood pieces,” Pep said. He turned back to Dr. Simeone. “You did keep them, right?”

* * *

The one attractive aspect of the warehouse had been its top-notch air-conditioning. Outside the humidity was as thick as butter. Standing around in rotting trash didn’t improve the atmosphere, even if they did have grad students to do the dirty work.

Clad in hygienic mask and latex gloves, a tousled Kun hauled the last handfuls of trash out of the dumpster and tossed them onto the ground. Then he blew out his cheeks and rested his arms on the dumpster’s edge. “That’s it.”

At that Pep and Lionel popped their heads over the dumpster. Pep peeked over the edge while Lionel hastily kept Kun from running a hand through his hair. Then Pep hauled himself out and started picking up and putting down things: bits of wood, plastic bottles, stained crumples of paper. He held up a piece of wood as long as his forearm, with one end splintered as if somebody had been trying to make a paintbrush out of it. “Is this one?”

Dr. Simeone was standing back with Luís, hands in his pockets. He leaned forward, squinted and then shook his head. “No, I think that’s from last week. Look, Pep, why the hell do we need to look at the wood? If it’s a fucking animated statue, it’s not going to be wooden.”

“Because I don’t think it ever was a statue,” Pep said, a touch of asperity in his voice. He straightened up and then pulled his mask down under his chin. “Diego, according to that stele the Keeper has transformative powers—”

“That’s not how I interpreted it,” Dr. Simeone said. He was still squinting and it wasn’t because he couldn’t see Pep’s unwavering determination that he was right.

Luís cleared his throat. “The Keeper? What the hell is the Keeper?”

Pep flicked part of his glower at Luís before refocusing all of it on a stone-faced Simeone. The heat had made Luís roll up his sleeves and Gerard had gone so far as to strip off his shirt, but Pep still had on his double layer of polo shirt. That was probably why he had sweat rolling down the side of his face, but that certainly didn’t explain the volcanic intensity of his eyes. “It’s a legendary monster that runs around the grasslands. Supposedly it was once a man, but after he stole some sort of sacred treasure, he became a monster.”

“That’s one version,” Simeone muttered with a diffident shrug. He took his hands out of his pockets and folded his arms over his chest. Then he started walking through the trash, occasionally pausing to kick something out of his way. “There’s another one where he didn’t steal it, but was given it. There was an invading Incan army and he was supposed to take it and run to keep it away from them, and he’s been running ever since.”

To be honest, Luís didn’t really see why the difference between the two stories was that critical, but he didn’t want to restart the academic debate. “So that’s on the stele, I take it. Did it say what kind of monster he became?”

“No—”

“Yes—”

Pep and Simeone stopped and eyed each other. They were facing opposite directions and had turned only their heads, and Luís could just about hear the Western showdown music. “Well, so what is the wood going to tell us again?”

Simeone really had no reason to snort and look superior, because Luís wasn’t siding with him. If Pep had dragged them out here, it was because the man genuinely believed that it’d be useful and more often than not Pep was right about such things. But Luís was hot and starting to get hungry, and they were standing in stinking trash. He wanted to know what the hell they were doing.

“We’re out here because I think the stele says the Keeper was able to change himself to better hide in the cliffs. So it wasn’t a statue. It just _looked_ like one, and if I’m right, there should’ve been traces when it broke out. Now excuse me as I try to find an actual answer,” Pep snapped. Then he turned on his heel and stalked away from Luís. He grabbed hold of the dumpster’s edge, pulled himself up onto it, and then disappeared inside.

After a moment, Luís accepted the fact that Pep was mad at him. He didn’t have the faintest idea why, but that obviously wasn’t going to make it less true. Then he resigned himself to losing a good pair of Italian leather shoes and got into the dumpster himself.

Lionel and Kun had long since gotten out, probably to go gossip with Xavi some more, so it was just Luís and Pep in the dumpster. And Pep was damn near on his hands and knees, pawing around in some extremely dubious puddles on the bottom.

“Pep,” Luís said.

“Hmmm?” floated insincerely upward.

Luís rolled his eyes. Then he set his shoulders and knelt down by the other man. He craned his head to look Pep in the eye, and when Pep tried to avoid him, Luís reached out and gripped Pep’s shoulder. “Pep. Pep—damn it, it’s all fine and well when you want to talk, but when I do—”

“Well, you don’t really, do you? You just play along for a little well,” Pep snarled, looking up. A drop of sweat beaded off his forehead and rolled into his eye. He reflexively raised a hand, still glaring at Luís.

When Luís intercepted it, Pep tried to twist away. Then he let out a long, strangled sort of breath, clearly reminding himself that the gracious thing was to be tolerant. He looked a bit more startled when Luís simply wiped his eye. Then he grimaced and stared down at his feet. His brows twitched and then he wrinkled his nose. He shifted his toes out of the puddle in which they’d been stewing.

“What kind of traces are we looking for?” Luís asked.

Pep glanced up. “I thought you didn’t believe me on that.”

“Did I say that?” Luís rapidly reviewed the past few minutes, concluded he hadn’t and just waited for Pep to answer.

“Ah…you did ask why we were out here, right after Diego…” Apparently realizing the same thing, Pep made a few awkward passes with his hand and then settled into a chagrined huddle. He chewed his lip. “That man seemed much more accommodating over the phone.”

“Pep, I’m not an archaeologist,” Luís said. He let Pep raise his head before continuing. “I’m not even going to get into those details. But I know you’re a good one and if you think we should look into this, I’ll look into it before I dismiss it. I just wanted to know what exactly we’re looking for, because I’m no expert and I’m not going to know that unless you tell me.”

For a couple more seconds Pep stayed in that uncertain hunch. His eyes moved back and forth over Luís’ face. Then he breathed out and his shoulders relaxed out of their tense slant. He bobbed a few times on his feet. “I’m sorry. I know I get caught up in my work—”

“Which is going to get us to this monster, so I don’t mind,” Luís shrugged. He grinned at the dubious look Pep gave him. “I believe you, all right? It’s not like I’ve seen Simeone fight it out with snake statues that eat people.”

Pep blinked, then dropped his head, but not before Luís had seen the grin. Then he started to rise; Luís did the same. And a good thing since Pep was so relieved he didn’t watch for the side of the dumpster and knocked his arm into it. He would’ve fallen face-first if Luís hadn’t grabbed his arm.

“Well, actually it’s not so much wood that I’m looking for as—as pottery, or something like that. That invoice _did_ say statue, after all, so I was thinking perhaps it’d been coated in something that looked like—” Pep started.

“Like this?” Xavi held up a grayish thing a little bigger than his hand. “We, well, found a couple pieces like it while you were…er…”

Pep’s eyes lighted up, and it was all Luís could do to get the man out of the dumpster before he tried to run straight through its wall to Xavi. “Excellent! That’s exactly what I was thinking of,” Pep said, good humor restored. “Gather all that you can find and then let’s go back inside and see if any of it fits together.”

* * *

Simeone was still grumbling about his pet theory, but he had enough sense to send for more people when it became clear that half the garbage was made up of the odd shards. He set his students to gathering them and relocated Pep’s group to a nearby office where they spread the shards over the table.

“I think I’ve got a claw,” Gerard said, holding it up.

That fragment Luís had found in the corpse’s skull would have slotted nicely into the end of the claw. Kun whistled, eyes wide, and reached out for it. Then he jerked back his hand a beat before Gerard waved him off. He looked at his wrist.

“Hey—” The door banged open and Cambiasso from the barbecue ran into the room. He nearly skidded into the table, caught himself on the edge and then doubled over, panting. “Hey—”

“Cuchu?” Lionel dropped the two bits he’d been trying to match and pushed himself back from the table.

Before he could get over to help, Cambiasso threw back his head and stared wildly around the room. “It got him!” he said. “Simeone! It got—”

“The monster?” Pep stood up and put one hand on the back of his chair, as if he was prepared to toss that aside and rush out. “It came outside?”

Of course Pep’s machete was across the room from him; Luís had never actually given it back, partly because Pep hadn’t asked for it and partly because Luís honestly wasn’t sure whether it would be more dangerous to have Pep hang onto it or not. So just in case, Luís slid out of his seat and began to work his way around to the end. He snagged the machetes on the way.

“No, no, Simeone went inside,” Cambiasso said. He’d gotten his breath back a bit, but that just seemed to make him talk even faster. “He said he was thirsty and we turned around for a second, and he went inside. And then we heard this—”

“He…went inside by himself?” Whatever Pep’s actual capacity for self-protection, he at least had a decent grasp of it in the abstract. Which was typical of him. “When we know this thing’s running around?”

Cambiasso needed a second to reset his facial expression. Then he shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, Diego’s kind of…I don’t know, he just sort of thinks that because he handled that cattle-mauling thing all by himself, monsters can’t kill him.”

Gerard put down the claw. “Cattle-mauling thing?”

“Yeah, that was last semester.” The click of Cambiasso flipping back to panicky was damn near audible. “Anyway, Javi and Gaby ran in and it must’ve just gone off, because they just found Simeone bleeding all over the place. It was a mess and everyone’s freaked out, and I think they’re shutting down the university. Well, Javi wants to but Simeone was the one on top of things for the day and now he’s maybe at the hospital. If he didn’t bleed out on the way.”

“Christ, he’s dead?” Gerard blurted out.

Lionel didn’t say anything, but he apparently missed his chair when he went to sit on it and nearly flipped the table as he tried not to fall on his rear. He stiff-armed off Xavi’s help, then pulled at his hair without actually removing it from his eyes. “Dr. Simeone’s…really that bad?”

“Er.” Cambiasso scratched at his head. “Well, probably not. He’s such a fucking idiot that it’d serve him right if…” he took a look at Lionel’s quietly distressed face and concluded that kicking the puppy wouldn’t be worth the personal satisfaction “…he’s probably going to be all right. He’s a tough son of a bitch. But he’s definitely not coming back tonight, that’s for sure.”

“Then who’s in charge?” Pep asked sharply. He turned around and began to look for something—Xavi and Gerard held up a mobile phone and a pen, respectively—then focused in on Luís. “Has anyone called the dean? Did Diego leave that door unlocked? How do we know it hasn’t gotten out of the building?”

Luís did his damnedest to remember what it was, but try as he might, he honestly had no idea what had gotten under Pep’s skin this time. It wasn’t like he was responsible for Simeone’s complete and utter snottiness—oh, Pep wanted the machete. Well, Pep wasn’t getting the machete.

“And what about his—his students?” Polite as usual, Pep looked straight at Cambiasso till he’d finished talking. Then he turned around. He glanced down at the machete they were both holding, gave it a tug and then looked up at Luís. His lips parted, held the part for a few seconds and then pulled into a thin line. “I need this.”

“No, you don’t. I need it, because we’re leaving for the hotel and I’m not good at carrying precious artifacts, as I think we’ve already proved,” Luís muttered under his breath. He kept hold of the machete.

In the background, Cambiasso was rattling on about how they’d called the Dean but he was out and they’d just had to leave a voicemail, and of course the grad students had all been rounded up and given flamethrowers but he had no idea about the door. Something about him being the only other senior staff besides Dr. Simeone up today.

Pep was starting to get that heated glint in his eye. “So while I’m going to the hotel, exactly what will you be doing?” he asked.

“Going with you.” Luís truthfully had no idea what Pep had expected him to say, but that clearly hadn’t been it. Which…irked Luís, for reasons he didn’t quite have the time or the inclination to examine at the moment. “You aren’t actually planning on staying and tracking it down this instant, are you? Didn’t we have a talk about not overstepping our hosts’ authority, or something like that?”

“I—we did but don’t change the subject,” Pep said. He grabbed his neck and pulled at it while looking away. Then he looked back and his eyes were full-on flashing indignation. “I am _not_ abandoning these people.”

“And going back to the hotel is not abandoning, it’s regrouping in a safe location to figure out a plan of attack,” Luís retorted in exasperation. He managed to twist the machete out of Pep’s hand, but Pep immediately slid between him and the door. Knocking the man out wasn’t an option because there were others around, and as helpful as Xavi had been lately, Luís doubted that the man would go for that. “Pep. Listen to me. I know you’re concerned. But rushing into this isn’t going to help anybody. We can’t do anything till we finish figuring out what this damn thing is, and it doesn’t look like we can do that here in peace and quiet, so—”

It made sense to Pep. He obviously didn’t want it to, but his intellect wouldn’t let him pretend otherwise. “Fine,” he said after a long moment.

Luís didn’t waste time breathing out a sigh of relief. He tucked the machetes under his right arm and got out his phone, only to have something catch his elbow. He looked at his phone, then up at Pep, who’d put himself right up against Luís.

“But what happens after we figure it out?” Pep hissed, shoving his face into Luís’ blink. He flexed his fingers hard around Luís’ arm.

It was a clearly meaningful flex, but what that meaning was, was eluding Luís. “What do you mean, what happens? We kill it.”

Pep’s brows arched. He was starting to tremble from the sheer strain of his doubt. “‘We’?”

“Why not?” Luís asked lightly. When in doubt, passing oneself off as confidently blithe at least bought a few seconds while the other person tried to figure out where all that certainty was coming from.

Well, unless the other person happened to be an intensely detail-oriented Catalan professor who didn’t bother wondering about why Luís was certain because he knew they were going to have a discussion about it anyway. If Pep got any more worked up, he was going to vibrate himself onto the machetes. “Because last time you handcuffed me to a _plane_ ,” he snapped.

Luís discreetly twitched the machete tips so they weren’t pointing at Pep’s nearly non-existent belly. Where all that food from the welcome barbecue had gone—and Pep had stuffed himself, even with their fight—could probably qualify as an archaeological mystery in and of itself. “That was different.”

“ _Really_ ,” Pep drawled. For a moment Luís was strangely reminded of Zlatan.

Over in the corner, Xavi and Lionel stopped talking to Cambiasso about evacuation strategies. All three of them apparently found Pep’s sarcasm much more interesting, though Lionel at least had the decency to blush when Luís looked at him. Then Luís felt the circulation in his arm completely die and switched back to Pep. “We weren’t seeing each other in a non-professional way, you were getting kidnapped left and right when I wasn’t watching, and—”

“You _were_ one of those kidnappers, so I don’t know how you can say you weren’t watching—”

“—and I didn’t have as much of an interest as I do now in making sure you don’t yell at me when I come back,” Luís sighed. “Pep. I promise not to handcuff you to anything. All right?”

Pep stared hard into Luís’ face. It seemed like his skepticism had won out, and then he abruptly dropped back and down. He let go of Luís’ arm and, while Luís figured out whether he could still use that limb, hunched his shoulders and hung his head. His gaze briefly rose to meet Luís’, then fell to the floor as if he’d slapped. The color rose in his face. “Damn it,” he muttered, mostly at himself. “I—look, Luís, I just…that was very…rude of me. I just wanted to know…”

“It’s all right,” Luís said quietly. Almost in the same instant he turned on his heel and looked at their avid audience. “So how far is the parking lot from here?” he asked more loudly.

In return he was rewarded with a fascinating display of the different ways in which one could hide his metaphorical popcorn bucket. The range went from Lionel, who tried to pull it over his head before remembering it wasn’t real, to Cambiasso, who just about tossed back a last invisible kernel before jerking a thumb at the door. “Down the hall, take the stairs two flights, get outside into the clear…probably two, three hundred meters,” he said. “I can call Javi and have him cover the front door for us.”

“Sensible idea.” Then Luís turned back, only to find Pep was no longer behind him.

Instead Pep was nearly at the door and deep in conversation with a still-embarrassed Xavi. That was about how he should be acting…if he wasn’t upset and he had been upset bare seconds ago. And Pep let go of that sort of thing about as well as he normally did faking that he was all right. Nor had it escaped Luís that Pep had caved to him for the second time since they’d come here. Once, Luís might chalk up to Pep’s ideals about open-mindedness and peaceful resolutions, but twice was unnatural.

“Luís?” Pep took a decidedly tentative step towards Luís, then put out his hand almost like a plea. He was holding in something but he couldn’t keep it out of his eyes. “May I have my…so we can go?”

He also didn’t want to talk about it here. Luís agreed about that, so he handed over the machete. But as they started to pack up the shards, Luís reluctantly came to the conclusion that they did disagree on another point. If twice was in fact a full-blown pattern, then it appeared that Pep didn’t want to talk about it at all. Frankly, neither did Luís, but Luís had not gotten to this point by only doing what he wanted to do. For that matter, he hadn’t ended up with Pep by only doing what he wanted to do.

They’d have to talk about it, Luís grudgingly admitted. He absently hefted the machete, then looked down at it. Well, after the monster was dead.

* * *

Upon relocation to the hotel, Pep promptly busied himself with cadging meeting-room space out of the concierge. Making up for it was probably going to cost Luís a fair bit, but Xavi at least had had the sense to grab the keys and run before Pep could rip more than a shirt-collar.

“No, over there, Kun,” Pep said, pointing at a stack of chairs. Then he flopped against Luís’ back so Luís could feel that his arms were tightly crossed over his chest. “You can put me down now, Luís.”

“Are you sure?” Luís surveyed the space. It was a decent size and had all the furniture pushed up against the wall, so they could use the floor in the middle for sorting out the shards. One corner had outlets for computers and hopefully an Internet connection. “You don’t need to go back and request any special equipment, do you?”

Pep’s voice was muffled in Luís’ back but distinctly unamused. “Well, if I did, I could hardly do that from your shoulder, could I?”

“Of course you could,” Luís said cheerful, though he obligingly bent down so Pep could slide off onto his feet. Then he straightened up and dusted Pep down while the other man stared at him with a mixture of exasperation and disbelief. “It might not be quite as invasive of personal space, but I’d be willing to make up the difference.”

“…I didn’t grab anything….er, indelicate, did I?” Pep asked after a long moment. Then he made an irritated noise and hit Luís lightly on the shoulder. His blush was still going strong. “ _Stop_ finding this so funny.”

“No, over here,” Cambiasso said sharply. “Aguero, are you even listening to me? Pay attention!”

“All right,” Luís agreed, grinning.

Pep raised his hand as if to smack Luís again, then put it down. He was probably trying for a stern expression but it came out more huffy than anything else. “I’m going to get everyone working on piecing together the statue,” he said. “Then we might at least have an idea of what it looks like.”

“Sounds good.” Luís watched till Pep was well and truly into that task before he sneaked back into the hall.

He had messages, of course, but he just scanned them for priority flags. None appeared, so he rang up Zlatan. And then sighed, hung up and actually read a few messages to give Zlatan’s line time to stop giving him a busy signal. Rui wanted to know why Quique was sulking all over his back porch, Albelda had been sighted in Rosario and Maldini wanted to know exactly what Luís and Zlatan were doing, if Luís happened to have a second. No, he didn’t, even though Luís knew full well Maldini wasn’t really just asking. 

On the second try, Zlatan picked up. *Hey, I just read on the police update that somebody got jumped—*

“I know, we were on campus but now we’re all back at the hotel,” Luís interrupted. “Did you get the blueprints?”

*Yeah. Well, kind of.* Zlatan’s tone grew considerably defensive. *Look, I got what was there and it’s not my fault that they had some flooded plumbing three years ago so that parts of it are smeary, okay?*

Luís wasn’t that religious a man but he did briefly consult with heaven on the matter of retaining his patience. Then he took a deep breath and focused on the monster. “All right, all right. This thing came in a crate about two and a half meters by one by one, so there can’t be that many interior spaces where it can hide. Start mapping them out and get it ready for tonight.”

*Tonight? Did you find your magical scroll-thingy that says what it is? That’s gonna be a tight deadline if we need any special ammo,* Zlatan rattled off, going from surprised to curious to faintly whiny in a single breath. Then something beeped and for a moment Luís thought the call had been dropped. *Shit. Um, listen, that’s Sandro trying to call me.*

“Zlatan, for the love of God, can’t you tell them you’re working?” Luís asked. He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off the migraine he could feel coming.

*I did, okay? But they just point out that I said I was taking a fucking vacation when I left and they kind of have a point. Since I _am_ on vacation, just “helping” you out on the side,* Zlatan snapped. *Look, you want to call them and tell them I’m actually working for you, then they might stop calling. Or else I have to take this before Sandro gets his panties— _fuck_. Fuck, I missed it. Son of a fucking bitch, he’s going to complain so much, like he doesn’t have weeks where he fucking sulks and never answers the phone or email or anything, and I honest-to-God have to hunt him down to find out he’s not _dead_ —*

“Luís, I—” Pep stopped. His eyes went to the phone, then to Luís’ face. He couldn’t have heard Zlatan but he apparently saw something incriminating in Luís’ expression, because his mouth thinned into a rigid line.

“I’ll call you back,” Luís said. He half-heard Zlatan’s incredulous objection before his hanging up cut that off. Then he put away the phone, faced Pep, and tried for mild curiosity. “Yes?”

It was a moment before Pep could come up with an actual question, though at least four or five were glaring accusingly out of his eyes. He moved his hands around agitatedly a few times before settling on clenching them behind his back, as if that was going to hide them from Luís. “I’m sorry, was I interrupting some of your other business?” he asked acidly.

“Did something come up?” Luís glanced around Pep into the meeting room and saw Kun pacing around, looking upset and waving his hands around. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”

“What do I need, oh, what I _need_ ,” Pep repeated under his breath. He rolled his eyes and ostentatiously shifted his disbelieving look off to the side. Then he sighed irritably and put his hand to his forehead. “You know what? It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” The hand came down to show Pep staring bitterly at Luís. “Just go finish your call. We can handle it.”

“Pep, what the hell do you want?” Luís asked after a long pause. It came off sharp and he knew that that wasn’t going to calm things down, but he was having a hard time being particularly concerned about that. Most of his energy was currently tied up with trying not to shake Pep senseless—at this point Pep obviously wasn’t going to be sensible, but Luís had just promised not to… to disable him. That’d been the spirit of the promise, and he was going to live up to it and not be tempted to split hairs. “Whatever it is, I can—”

Pep wasn’t listening. In fact, he was already turning back to the room. “No, no, never mind. If it wasn’t important you wouldn’t be doing it now, clearly.”

To emphasize how much he didn’t need Luís’ help, Pep lifted his right arm and condescendingly flapped his hand at Luís over his shoulder. It made for a convenient grip as Luís dragged the other man back into the hall. He ignored Pep’s yelp and backed Pep up against the wall, then slid out his foot to kick the door shut when Pep looked in that direction.

“Pep,” Luís started.

Lashes fluttering with his put-upon sigh, Pep turned his head back towards Luís. He slumped into the wall and looked morosely at a point slightly above Luís’ hair. “Yes?”

“Pep, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but—” Luís saw the flicker of despair in Pep’s eyes, just before Pep began twitching his cheeks and mouth in an effort to compose his face. It made Luís feel surprisingly awful. And then, less surprisingly, utterly fed up with this back and forth nonsense. Fine, he didn’t know what was going on but it was _not_ all his fault. “All right. All right, fine. You want to know? That was Zlatan. You remember Zlatan? I tried to get him to come with us to El Siete’s tower but he was busy?”

The change in subject was confusing Pep enough so that he had to abandon his attempts at saintly calm. He blinked. “Er, with the…the Italian gentlemen in the towels?”

“Gentlemen—well, Maldini, I suppose,” Luís snorted. Then he shook his head and looked hard at Pep. “What is the matter with you? I’m trying to help, not to sabotage you. All right, maybe I’ve…I haven’t told you everything about how I’m doing it, but it doesn’t help when you start not telling me things.”

“No, but it makes the score a little more even,” Pep snapped.

Luís honestly couldn’t believe he’d just heard that. He stared at Pep for a few seconds. “Well, that’s mature.”

“Because that’s what you make me do! You don’t respond to normal inquiries so I’ve practically got to make this a goddamn spy mission to get your attention, and there’s already an ancient mythical monster! Just how jaded are you?” Pep cried, throwing up his arms. They came up about halfway before running into Luís’ arms; Pep grunted and dropped them, and dropped his head as well. His shoulders heaved hard as he struggled to control his breathing, then drooped. “And if you can’t trust me enough to at least tell me you don’t want to talk about something, I don’t have any reason to believe you’re truly here to help. Because why would you?”

Near the end Pep’s voice cracked, and then he hurried out the last few words. But Luís couldn’t confirm his suspicions because Pep kept his head down. Even when he rubbed at his eyes, which called for some awkward contorting around Luís’ arm.

“Pep,” Luís sighed. He waited.

Of course Pep didn’t look up. Luís loosened his grip on the man’s shoulders and Pep moved his head like he was looking at Luís’ right hand, but that was all. He was still pushing at his face with his hand.

Finally Luís got hold of Pep’s chin and tried to pull it up. Pep didn’t want that and fought it so Luís had to pin the man back by the left shoulder. And then Pep abruptly jerked himself stiff and straight and looked straight at Luís with wet cheeks and eyes that were already reddening. The firm jaw didn’t do a thing to convince Luís that Pep was handling whatever it was.

“Because I don’t want you to get hurt,” Luís said.

Pep pursed his lips so hard they turned white, then tried to wipe at his left eye while simultaneously faking dismissive. He’d have a hard time pulling that off when he was calm; as it was, he nearly stabbed his fingers into his nose before Luís pulled down his hand. “Well, yes, of course, that would be in your interests—”

“For God’s sake, Pep. Yes, it’s in my interests. It’s in my damn interests because I like you in one piece and happy and I’m sorry if that’s not altruistic or high-minded enough for you, but it is something I genuinely want.” Luís had to stop for a few breaths. He wasn’t going to be able to do this calmly, but he at least wanted it to come out intelligibly. “And it’s why I’m here, and why I’m staying even though you drive me absolutely insane. It’s enough of a reason for me.”

At first Pep seemed to take that well: he exhaled sharply, then sagged back while looking almost relieved. But as he kept gazing at Luís, that relief melted away and instead he began to look…guilty? He put his hands up and oddly ran them along Luís’ upper arms before letting them drop back to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to—I’m not trying to force you to change. You’re who you are, and I have no right to quibble about that considering all that—”

And now Pep was trying to backtrack the last few minutes, and Luís just didn’t understand. He opened his mouth, then decided actions would have the advantage of making certain Pep would stop talking and kissed the man.

Pep moved his mouth around a last word, then started as if he’d just figured out Luís was feeling him up in a public hallway. Then he wrapped his arms around Luís’ head and kissed back hungrily. Too much so, if Luís was brutally honest—Pep should be relieved and maybe a little interested, but what he was doing was clinging to Luís as if he thought Luís would never come back. Luís stepped back but Pep wouldn’t let him break it off; he held on and pushed himself up against Luís so hard that it was all Luís could do to keep them from falling over backward.

Someone cleared their throat. “Pep? _Pep_ ,” Xavi said. “Listen, Pep, Figo, I’m really sorry to interrupt but—oh, for—Pep!”

“Gah!” Pep damn near somersaulted himself over Luís’ arms. He teetered on his feet, wide-eyed and smacking his flailing elbows into Luís, before Luís got a good hold on his waist and steadied him. Then he put back his shoulders and stood up and looked at Xavi with just a little bit of a blush. “Er, yes?”

Xavi held up a mobile. “It’s the hospital,” he said. “Dr. Simeone. He’s in surgery but the doctor says he’ll pull through.”

“Oh. Oh! Oh, that’s wonderful,” Pep replied. He paused to catch his breath. Then his attention wandered to something going on inside the room. “Did they unpack everything already?”

“Yeah, and I think we’ve got a foot together. Or maybe it’s the hand. Anyway, it’s pretty weird-looking.” Xavi started to point out something, then dropped his hand and made an exasperated noise. “Kun, for the last time, _no_.”

“But it’s _important_ ,” Kun called out from the room, in the time-honored agonized wail of misunderstood young adults. “I need to get it—”

“No, damn it. Do you want to get mauled like Simeone?” Xavi snapped, stalking back inside.

Pep took a step that way, then turned around. He’d cleared out most of the heartfelt emotion from his system and was thinking again. “Wait, so why is Zlatan here?”

Luís opened his mouth and then held it that way. Several expressions flitted over Pep’s face and none of them were surprised. Last came that odd guilt-stricken one that made no sense but made Luís feel as if he’d just killed his own mother. Then Pep lifted his chin and turned back to the room.

“Because he’s on a break and wanted something to do,” Luís said, half-intentionally. He stopped while Pep twisted back to stare incredulously at him. Then he sighed and gestured at the room. “It’s not as if I can use your people to do my research, and I can’t do everything myself.”

“You could. Well, not the illegal things, I’d hope, but everything else…” Pep came back and rested his hands on Luís’ shoulders. He was smiling—a small one, not showing his teeth, still tight around the edges, but it was a smile. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Then he leaned forward and brushed his mouth against Luís’. It wasn’t even a peck because their lips were so misaligned, but it told Luís better than the other kiss that Pep was fine.

“I’m going to see where people are at, and then if the computer’s up and you’re done with your calls, I can show you some files on the Keeper legend,” Pep said, stepping back.

Luís watched the other man walk back into the room, head carried high and easy. It was a good thing Pep was feeling all right, because Luís _still_ didn’t know what the hell was going on.

* * *

“Yeah, well, I don’t care,” Zlatan said, smoothing the blueprints out over the table. When the corners kept curling up, he dug out some spare gun clips from his pocket and used them for paperweights. “He already saw me and Sandro fighting, and you like him, so it’s not like it’s a big surprise to anybody. You might want to make sure Sandro knows you don’t want anybody messing with Guardiola, though.”

The blueprints weren’t in that bad a shape, just a bit waterstained. All of the lines were still fairly readable so Luís wasn’t entirely sure why Zlatan had been so anxious earlier. “I think Nesta has enough sense to know that by himself. And is a big enough gossip.”

“Well, whatever.” Unconvinced, Zlatan bent down to his backpack and pulled out some plastic overlays. He held them rolled-up and absentmindedly tapped them against his shoulder while surveying the little space they had left on the bed. They were up in Luís and Pep’s room, since that was about the only place in the hotel where there weren’t bleary-eyed archaeologists tossing pottery shards at each other or turning Luís’ brain inside-out. “Also, you might wanna call Paolo.”

“Why?” Luís tugged a plastic overlay away from Zlatan, then unrolled it. After some squinting, he figured out the numbering system and laid it over its matching blueprint.

When he held out his hand for the next one, Zlatan was looking at him as if he’d said something foolish. “Because you hung up on him for me?” Zlatan said.

“Isn’t that your problem? You’re the one who’s hoping he’ll call back,” Luís muttered. The overlay at least was nice work. Good contrasting color, easily understandable coding scheme. Proved Zlatan was capable of decent work when the Italians weren’t shorting out his commonsense.

“Hey, I didn’t hang up on him.” Zlatan busied himself with arranging the remaining overlays on the bed. Then he stood up and stuck his hands on his hips in what he probably thought was a very defiant pose. “He was going on about how he didn’t expect that sort of rudeness from you. And something about how it made it clear _I_ wasn’t telling the truth and whatever, but it’s not like they’ve ever really given a shit about what I get up to before. I honestly don’t know what that man’s problem is. He knew Zlatan did his own thing when he met Zlatan.”

Luís paused. Then he gritted his teeth and asked the inevitable. “Just what are you all fighting about anyway?”

“Nothing!” Eventually Zlatan remembered that Luís had never believed his bulging-eye innocent look and fell back on a diffident shrug. “It shouldn’t be a big deal, anyway. This job just came up in Turin and when I came back from it they were having fits, and I just didn’t get why and they were all mad at me for that. It’s not like I get hacked off when Paolo fucks off with Vieri for a couple weeks or Sandro goes with his old Lazio friends.”

“Were you doing the Turin job with somebody else?” Luís asked after a moment’s thought. Mostly about whether he really had to do this, but since he currently owed Larsson and couldn’t make that man deal with Zlatan’s Italian complex, he apparently did.

Zlatan puffed out his cheeks, then collapsed them to make a rude noise. “Yeah, Mutu. Why?”

“Didn’t you and he have a thing?” Luís patiently replied.

“Okay, it was _once_ and a long time ago and we were drunk and he was spazzing out over the ash in his hair and mostly I just wanted him to shut up,” Zlatan snapped, looking away. He yanked at his hair, then looked back at Luís. “And so what? Paolo’s fucking black book is like a Bible of pros and Sandro had that weird thing with De Rossi that I never ask about. And anyway, what the fuck, they think I go on one stupid job without them and I’m going to bang the first fussy—”

“Oh,” Pep said from the doorway. When they looked over, he promptly stepped back out into the hall. Then he came cautiously in and peered around. “Wait, isn’t this our room?”

Luís needed a moment to make himself relax and switch off some reflexes. Then he stepped in front of Zlatan and nodded. “Yes. We came up here because you were talking to Gerard when Zlatan came, and I didn’t want to disturb you. Pep, this is—”

“Hi,” Zlatan said, grinning broadly. He slid around Luís and stuck out his hand at Pep. “Nice to meet you again. Sorry about last time. I would’ve gone if Sandro hadn’t been such a pain in the ass.”

“Ah…well, it turned out all right. Pleased to meet you,” Pep answered, blinking. He shook Zlatan’s hand, then glanced between Zlatan and Luís. Then he noticed the bed. “What are those? Are those blueprints?”

“For the university. We were looking at the places where the monster might be able to hide.” Luís took Pep by the arm and pulled him away from Zlatan, who was looking entirely too smug about this. “How are things going downstairs?”

Pep grimaced, then rubbed at this side of his face. One of his eyes was starting to twitch from fatigue and too much coffee. “We’ve got a leg and a half, and possibly the crown of the head. But I think we’re going to run out of pieces soon.”

“Well, don’t you just need the teeth?” Luís asked. At Pep’s blank look, Luís remembered why he normally didn’t rely on other people’s jokes. “Never mind. That was…it was just something Cambiasso said was an archae—”

“ _Oh_.” Then Pep laughed and leaned against Luís’ shoulder. “Oh, well, sometimes. But I don’t think this time…so you think you know where it is?”

“Not quite. It’s more eliminating where it couldn’t be—” Luís turned around, hearing someone running up the hall.

Pep had left the door open. Apparently Gerard didn’t expect that, because when he crashed in, he had his arm out as if he’d tried to reach for a doorknob that wasn’t there. By the time he righted himself, Lionel and Xavi had appeared behind him. Lionel was clutching Xavi’s arm.

“Pep! Pep!” Gerard gasped. “It’s Kun. He’s gone.”

“What?” Pep asked.

Gerard started to explain, but Lionel abruptly let go of Xavi and pushed himself in front of the other man. “He thinks he dropped his cross back at the university,” Lionel said. “In the warehouse. And he said he was going home but his mother just called to say he didn’t make it there. I think he went to go find his cross and we have to go get him before the monster eats him.”

* * *

“He wrapped it around his wrist because the clasp was broken and then it dropped off somewhere. He didn’t notice till we were putting together the pieces at the university. We told Kun to wait and we’d get a group to go together in the morning, but he was really upset,” Xavi explained. He seemed more disgusted than concerned for Kun, but he was making a good effort at keeping it out of his voice. He scrubbed his head, then glanced at Lionel. “It’s some kind of family heirloom. Finally I told him to just go home, because he wasn’t getting anything done, but it looks like he just went back to the university.”

Lionel had moved some of the blueprints aside and was sitting on the corner of the bed. After his outburst, he’d gone quiet again and had refused to look at anyone. He hadn’t responded to Gerard’s attempts to console him on his friend’s stupidity, or even apparently registered Zlatan’s presence.

“Well, that’s fucking brilliant,” Zlatan said. He flipped his mobile shut and then used it to poke Luís. “Got confirmation on the kid’s car. It’s parked up by the south fence. He remembered where the guards don’t overlap, but he can’t figure out that this thing is going to eat him?”

“It’s not going to eat him,” Pep said hotly, with a quick look at Lionel. Then he turned back to the blueprints on the bed. “All right, which one of these is the warehouse?”

Luís cleared his throat. He might as well just saved his breath for a sigh, since Pep completely ignored him and continued to mess around with the blueprints. Finally Luís had to grab Pep’s arm and pull him back, and then give Pep a shake when the man just tried to reach around Luís with his other arm. “Pep. There is a _monster_ running around that building. A monster that likes to maul people. And we don’t even know what it really looks like.”

“Exactly! That’s why we have to go get—”

“No, it’s not, and no, I’m not being coldblooded, so don’t look at me like that,” Luís said. “Listen to me. When it was Dr. Simeone you saw the point about evacuating first and figuring out what to do second.”

“Because they already had taken Diego to the hospital,” Pep snapped. “Kun’s in there by himself and he’s apparently quite upset, which means he won’t be thinking that clearly. If that thing catches him, he could be in serious trouble and we can’t just leave him to it.”

Luís took a careful breath. “You’re also upset.”

“Because Kun could be eaten by a monster!”

On the bed, Lionel looked up sharply. Then he put his hands down and pushed himself to his feet.

“I _know_ ,” Luís said, trying to keep his temper. No wonder Xavi was so happy to facilitate their relationship; he must be thrilled to not have to deal with this himself anymore. “But damn it, it does _not_ help Kun if we all run in there and get eaten too. We are not going to save that little moron by acting like idiots ourselves.”

“Then how?” For once Lionel didn’t flinch when everyone looked at him. He was obviously uncomfortable, shifting his feet and fidgeting with his belt, but he leveled his gaze straight at Luís and it was considerably more effective than Pep’s righteousness at convincing Luís to let him have a word. “Because we’re going to save him. One way or the other. I’ll do it myself if I have to, but Kun’s not getting eaten.”

Looking a little stricken, Xavi put out his arm and clasped Lionel’s shoulder. Lionel twitched but didn’t look back. Instead he kept staring expectantly at Luís.

Pep also looked at Luís, but his look wasn’t exactly expecting. For a moment Luís was tempted to ask why the man wanted Luís around, if he was that convinced that Luís was just a heartless son of a bitch. 

Instead Luís picked a blueprint off the bed. “First of all, are we sure Kun’s already in the warehouse? Did anybody try calling him?”

“Yeah, but he left his phone here.” Xavi pulled a mobile out of his pocket and held it out to Luís. When Luís waved it off, Xavi handed it to Lionel, who took it and cradled it in both hands. “Cambiasso also called the university, but everybody’s gone home for the night. There’s just the guards, but they’re supposed to stay around the perimeter and make sure nobody gets in. We tried to talk them into sending a group but they won’t without orders from their boss.”

“Who’s their leader?” Zlatan asked.

“No,” Luís said, just as Xavi started to reply.

Zlatan looked wounded. “I was just _wondering_. Not like I was going to do anything before we, you know, discussed it.”

Sometimes the Italians had a point about Zlatan’s lack of tact. “Well, before we discuss it, I want to know if the man’s even reachable,” Luís said.

“I’m not sure,” Xavi said slowly. “I asked Cambiasso and he said he’d see—that’s what he’s doing now—but he didn’t sound too optimistic. He says that the police have been waiting for some specialist and don’t want to do anything themselves.”

Luís nodded. He looked down at the blueprint in his hands, then at the roomful of people. Then he gritted his teeth and nodded again. “All right. We have to go after him.”

Lionel looked relieved, clasping his friend’s phone to his chest. Pep folded his arms over _his_ chest and lifted his chin at Luís. If he was puzzled about why Luís then looked away, he could go consult his grad students and they could have a nice roundtable while Luís…calmed himself down and figured out how they were going to get out of this in one piece. Yes, Pep was maddening, but he was _not_ the most difficult obstacle Luís had ever had to work around. Personal issues or not, Luís still knew what he was doing in this area.

“But we’re not just running in there, all right?” Luís added. “We’re going in as a group with a search strategy. Otherwise we’ll get separated from each other and either that thing will eat us individually or someone will shoot someone else. We’re going to do this in an intelligent, thorough manner.”

“Okay,” Lionel said. All the other students nodded attentively, while Zlatan just stood there and grinned approvingly. If he was that eager, he could have rear guard and be in charge of herding all these academics in the right direction.

“So this is the warehouse, right?” Xavi had sidled up next to Luís and was now bent down, hands on knees, and craning his head to look at the blueprint Luís was holding. He muttered to himself while poking his fingers at regular intervals at the paper; Luís realized a moment later that the man was counting the divisions. “Cool. It’s already gridded. That saves us some time. So what do you think’s going to be faster, a side-to-side sweep, or we can split up and come at it from opposite—”

Luís took away the blueprint and Xavi blinked, then coughed into his hand, looking a bit chagrined. In all honesty he had no reason to be, since so far he’d been the only one offering up much sense, but he was not the one in charge of this…this mission. Mission of fools, Luís thought briefly.

Then he collected himself and put the blueprint down on the bed. “We’re not splitting up. It’s hard to avoid tragic mistakes even with trained professionals, and I am not going to chance it with the personnel we’ve got right now. On the other hand, we don’t have to sweep every bit of the building. Kun’s not that likely to go into the maintenance areas unless he’s chased there, while this monster seems to prefer avoiding open space. We’re going to concentrate on finding Kun, not on hunting down the monster. All right?”

“All right,” everyone chorused.

* * *

They had eight people, as it turned out. Andrés was staying behind to try to keep working on the shards and to provide technical support, but Lionel had called up a student of Simeone’s to take Andrés’ place. Supposedly this Gonzalo had been around when Simeone had taken out that other monster and had done all right—normally Luís wouldn’t take that sort of claim on faith, but they were short on time and on options. Cambiasso had reported for sure that the official law enforcement wasn’t going to be of any help, and had further informed them that the other archaeologists were either helping Simeone’s family or too terrified to come.

So that left Lionel, Cambiasso, and Gonzalo from the university, and then Pep’s two students. And Zlatan, who was looking entirely too eager about the prospect of scaling the university gates.

“What?” he said, holding a coil of rope.

“That had better not be a grappling hook,” Luís sighed. He motioned for Zlatan to get out of the way, and when Zlatan grudgingly did, Cambiasso moved in with a set of keys. “Honestly, Zlatan, I thought this was your vacation.”

Zlatan rolled his eyes as he dropped the rope back into his duffel bag. Then he bent over to get the bag strap back over his shoulder. “It is. So?”

“So we’re going to track down an idiot student who’s apparently never seen a horror movie in his life. We’re not breaking into some high-security installation, so knock it off with the Bond imitation.” The only extras Luís had with him were a walkie-talkie and his rifle. He didn’t intend to spend any more time in the building than he had to and more gear would both slow him down and lull him into thinking he could linger when that wasn’t the point. The point was…

The point was, they were walking into a large, poorly-lit building with plenty of hiding places in the middle of the night, with the full knowledge that something large and hungry for people was waiting for them. This was far from the brightest idea Luís had ever had and he was painfully aware of that fact. 

“Luís?” said Pep at Luís’ shoulder. Pep looked about as comfortable with the pistol Luís had given him as Luís was with this entire plan, but he at least had the correct grip on it. And he was pointing it at Luís’ foot.

Cambiasso’s cursing at the gate gave Luís an excuse to shift his position. Then he looked back at Pep. “Yes?”

“Luís, I just wanted to say—” Then Pep looked away. He swallowed hard and pursed his lips a few times. “I really appreciate you doing this,” he finally finished, voice a near-whisper.

“Got it,” Cambiasso said. The whine of the gate hinges grated over his voice.

Luís took a step towards the gates, then stopped. Then he shook his head and determinedly turned away. At this point Pep had more than enough proof that Luís really meant to help him and his friends, and it wasn’t even worth a discussion. Of course they’d have to have one anyway—at least if Luís was interested in not spending half his time supremely frustrated with Pep’s blindness—but not when there were inexperienced grad students thinking they should be following Zlatan on a monster-hunting mission.

“Jesus, this place is creepy at night,” Zlatan said, pulling up short. The shadowy figure of a medieval-looking statue had apparently caught him off-guard. He squinted at the stonework, then backed up and nearly ran into Luís. “Oh, hey, there you are. So which one of these things are we breaking into?”

“We’re not breaking into anything, and if you’re going to keep acting like this is some spy game, I suggest you go back and watch your late-night cable,” Luís muttered. He stalked past Zlatan towards the nearest building.

In all honesty, Luís didn’t even know what building it was, and so it was a surprise to find out that it actually was the warehouse. Not really a pleasant one; he was happy that the dark hid his expression while he composed himself. Then he looked over his shoulder.

Cambiasso dug around in his pocket, then held up his keys. Then he started forward, only to raise his brows when Luís blocked his way.

“Wait a moment,” Luís said. He unslung his rifle from his shoulder, checked the safety, and then turned to face the others.

Zlatan stared back, his bored expression saying he was two seconds from throwing a fit about why he didn’t understand what Luís was doing and why none of that was his fault. The grad students were clumped together and holding their various weapons a bit close, but mostly looked grimly determined—except for Xavi, who was squinting at his mobile’s glowing screen. Gerard nudged him and he looked up, blinking. Then he muttered an apology and shoved his phone behind his back. “Just checking on Andrés,” he said. “He’s got the bits we have together and is trying to search some databases for matches.”

Luís shrugged, letting his gaze drift to Pep. The other man was looking straight back. He wasn’t moving at all, but that wasn’t because he’d settled his nerves or whatever it was that had his mood whiplashing so badly. The rigid way he was holding his jaw conveyed more unease than any of his flailing or outbursts would have. It might have been better for him to just lose his temper.

Well, they didn’t have the time, thanks to that fool of a student. “Flashlights?” Luís asked.

After some rustling and patting around, everybody produced their flashlights. Gerard started to click his on, but Xavi slapped down his hand before Luís had to chew the man out for blinding him.

“All right. When we’re inside, I’ll be up front,” Luís said. He paused, then made a last-minute change. “Pep’s going to be with me, and then everyone else stays behind _in pairs_. One person with the flashlight, one person with the gun. Flamethrower. Whichever you have. You stick with your partner and make sure neither of you shoot somebody else or get in their line of fire. We’re going to do the open areas first and then meet in the middle. If we haven’t found Kun by then, we’ll regroup to talk about how we’re going to do the maintenance areas. Everyone got that?”

Assorted nods and ‘yeses.’ Even Zlatan realized this wasn’t the time to get fresh and contented himself with ruffling Messi, his partner, on the head.

Luís gave himself a last moment to think about all the ways this was not how he’d do things, if he had a free choice in the matter. Then he put that and waved Cambiasso forward.

When the other man came up, so did Pep and it took Luís a second to remember why. Then he suppressed a sigh and tried to ignore the curious look Pep was giving him. They had previously agreed it’d be better for Pep to stay in the middle and help keep an eye on Lionel, since Kun was Lionel’s friend and Lionel seemed most likely to not stick to the plan if Kun did end up being in danger. But given Pep’s continuing…issues with Luís, Luís thought it was better to keep the man where he could see him.

“Luís,” Pep muttered. He bumped Luís with his arm. “ _Luís._ ”

“Not now,” Luís hissed back. The doors were opening. He got up his rifle and clicked on the flashlight he’d clipped onto the barrel in place of the laser scope. Given how crowded he remembered the warehouse being, he doubted he’d need to make the kind of long shot that’d require the laser. And he also remembered very well what had happened the last time he’d let Pep have control of the flashlight.

Nothing sprang out right away. Not that surprising, actually: the front doors only opened onto a little foyer, which merely housed an entry light and a trashbin. The inside doors were, like the outside set, made of heavy wood so they still had no way of knowing what was inside.

Luís had everyone turn on their lights before Cambiasso unlocked the inside doors, so their eyes had time to adjust. Then he and Xavi covered Cambiasso as the other man dragged the right inside door open.

Again, nothing was there, but Luís found this nothing less than relieving. He stepped carefully over the threshold, keeping his rifle down while he took a quick look above him. Thankfully there didn’t seem to be any sort of shelf or ledge from which something could jump down.

Once Luís was fully inside, he stopped to let Pep catch up to him. Then he edged forward, staying level with Pep, while the others slowly filtered in after them. It was eerily silent inside the warehouse. The flashlights penetrated only a few meters out into the darkness, and the ranks of floor-to-ceiling shelves to either side made the place just as claustrophobic as El Siete’s tower had been.

“I’m—” Cambiasso paused as more than one person jumped and swore “—sorry. But I’m going to shut the door now. Then I’m going to turn on the lights, but it’s going to take maybe ten seconds for me to—”

“Me and you,” Gonzalo muttered. Well, he did at least remember instructions.

“—for us to get to the switch. I’ll cough when we get there so you’ll all know,” Cambiasso finished.

He was silent. Then Luís heard him and Gonzalo moving around, and the squeak of the door hinges. The little light coming in from the outside swept away and with a dull thud, they were left with only their flashlights.

“Luís,” Pep said again. He put his hand to Luís’ side, as if he wasn’t sure Luís was actually there, and then against Luís’ back. “Listen. I hope you’re not too irritated with me…can’t blame you if you are, and I’m sorry. But I…”

“Mother of God, Pep, do you ever understand that sometimes talking can _wait_?” Luís snapped.

And Cambiasso must have coughed while Luís was talking, because Luís didn’t hear it. All Luís knew was that suddenly the lights were on, and even if they were dim, the difference between them and the darkness was such that he had white spots dancing in his eyes. He cursed under his breath and blinked rapidly, trying to get them away. One spot in particular was irritating him, darting from right to left and then forward so he almost couldn’t see out of that—

“Oh, my God!” someone shouted.

Scrape of skin on concrete. That, Luís heard. He started to yank up his rifle, only to have something seize his arm. Instinct made him twist from it, but it hung on like a bulldog and dragged him over and down so he lost his grip on his rifle. A bare second later, a heavy weight slammed down on the spot where Luís had just been standing and Luís suddenly realized it was _Pep_ hauling at his arm. Then the other—

Luís’ vision had cleared just enough for him to glimpse something huge and pale, with a thing at the end that whipped towards his head—a tail? At any rate, Luís ducked and shoved Pep down as well. Then he kept pushing, digging in with his toes till his knee suddenly cracked into something upright. Hurt like hell, but it gave him enough leverage to get back on his feet. He half-heard, half-sensed Pep scrambling up beside him and reached blindly towards the other man.

Pep’s fingers closed around Luís’ wrist. That was all Luís needed: he shoved them around the corner of the shelf that’d tried to kneecap him, then kept pushing them down the aisle till they got to the other end. Then he stopped and spun in place, scanning the area around them.

Wall to their immediate left, open space to their front and back. The end of the shelf to their right. The shelf looked crammed full of crates but Luís couldn’t make out the very top, so he pressed them up against the crate on the very bottom. If anything jumped down from the top, it’d have to turn before it could get at them and that might be enough time. “Goddamn it,” he breathed. No rifle and no flashlight. The building lights alone weren’t nearly enough. “Did you see it? Did you see where anybody else went?”

Pep was breathing so hard that he couldn’t answer right away. He gripped Luís’ wrist as if it was all he had. “I—no, not really. It’s got a tail like a lizard, and I think I saw fangs. That’s all. It was—very fast. Ah, I think it was going for you, and when it missed it jumped back up somewhere. Xavi and Gerard went the other way. I think Lionel went with them. Other than that I’m not sure.”

Luís resisted the urge to thump his head into the crate behind them. Separated and scattered, exactly what he’d been trying to avoid. Of course they’d end up like this anyway. “Damn it. Hopefully they stayed in pairs, at least. And don’t get so damn excited they shoot first, ID later.”

“Where’s your gun?” Pep asked.

“Dropped it,” Luís said curtly. He eased himself up onto his feet and then pivoted on his toes to look back the way they’d come. Fifty or so meters, a long way to go if he wanted his rifle back. He still had a knife taped to his leg, but he wasn’t about to rely on just that.

Pep tapped at his shoulder, then pushed something at Luís: the pistol Luís had lent him. “I don’t really know how to use this anyway,” Pep said.

Luís just looked at him for a moment.

“Well, I know how to _hold_ it and look threatening, but it’s not like I go to a firing range every day,” Pep muttered, a bit defensively. “I tried to tell you—”

“Oh, was that what you wanted before we went in?” But Luís took it, and felt a little better. He still would have to judge his shots carefully, since he was carrying extra clips for the rifle and not a pistol, but at least he didn’t have to fall back on the caveman approach.

Pep made an odd, tight noise. “No. That was something else. But never mind that, what are we going to do now?”

Now he saw the sense in focusing on the task at hand. Not that Luís was about to look a gift horse in the mouth; he twisted back and checked out the other half of the aisle, then settled back against the crate. Then he cocked his head and listened hard. Somewhere on the other side of the warehouse, somebody had moved and it hadn’t been the monster. Monsters didn’t wear shoes. “We need to regroup. But not in the center. Since we’re sure this thing is in here, we need to get somewhere that we can defend. Then we go back to looking for Aguero.”

“There’s an office at the other end,” Pep said after a moment. “It’s for the warehouse manager. I only saw it for a moment when Diego was showing us around…”

“I think I remem—” Luís started.

A wild shout cracked the silence, followed sharply by two other noises. One was the spitting hiss of a flamethrower, while the other was a sort of chattering roar. Then the noise stopped, as crisply as if it’d merely been on TV and someone had clicked the ‘off’ button.

After another moment, Luís dug out his walkie-talkie and his phone, and handed both to Pep. “Hold on—no, don’t try either yet. Unless you know that one of the others has their phone on silent? Otherwise it might get that thing’s attention,” he told Pep. “Wait till we get to the office and can see them coming. All right?”

Pep’s eyes were little more than glitters in the dark. They bobbed with the other man’s nod. “All right,” he said. “Tell me when we’re going.”

Luís took a last look around. Then he slid out of his crouch and around the edge of the crate. “Now,” he muttered.

* * *

It took them ten minutes to go down two shelves. Where they were, the crates weren’t stacked too neatly and Luís had to divide his attention between looking over their heads and watching out for trailing cords or chains on the ground. They also couldn’t just make a run for it, since that might get them shot by an overexcited grad student. Instead Luís would hold his mobile out into the next aisle, flash the screen to signal to any people watching, and then hand it back to Pep before they edged across the space to the next shelf. At this rate it was going to take them nearly half an hour to make the office.

Even more annoyingly, the monster hadn’t made a sound. Luís occasionally heard a scuff of a shoe or an indecipherable whisper from one of the others, but nothing…monster-y. By this point he had a rough sense of where nearly everyone else was, but the Keeper or whatever it was could have walked out the front door and Luís wouldn’t know.

“I think—” Pep suddenly grabbed Luís’ shoulder “—Lionel! That was Lionel!”

Luís almost turned his head back. Then he caught himself and finished checking the space before them. When he was sure it was clear, he dropped back against the current crate they were using as a shield. “Where?”

Pep started to point and Luís caught his wrist, pushing it down. “In _words_ ,” Luís hissed.

For a moment Pep looked as if the right to express himself in whatever way felt most natural was going to override his sense of self-preservation. Then he took a short breath and stuck his hands under his arms. “Across the way, almost in the same aisle as us, but near the end that goes out into the middle,” he whispered. “I think he might have seen us.”

Luís nodded. He glanced over their heads, then behind Pep. When he found both those places free of Argentine-mauling creatures, he spared a quick look down the aisle. He didn’t see anyone, but there was a stack of boxes that Lionel should be hiding behind, if he had any sense. But it was a good hundred meters between them, and at least a quarter of that had nothing resembling cover.

“Is my phone on silent?” Luís asked.

Pep got it out and fiddled with it, then nodded.

“Good. Get out the walkie-talkie. There’s a red button on the side. Just push that and hold it down for three seconds, then let it go,” Luís said. He looked over their heads again. The longer they went without hearing that damn thing, the more he was certain that it wasn’t in the same building as them anymore. 

Of course, that was same kind of certain that had had him thinking Pep would appreciate him coming along on this trip, so Luís wasn’t about to bet on it. He stared down the remaining space between them and the office.

“Lionel doesn’t have a walkie-talkie,” Pep muttered.

Though when Luís looked, the man was at least doing as he was told and pressing the button. “I know, but Zlatan does. He’s on that side and can get to Lionel faster.” Luís knew immediately why Pep was opening his mouth with that outraged look. “No, we couldn’t use it earlier. I didn’t know where Zlatan was till about thirty seconds ago.”

“You know where Zlatan is?” Pep hissed.

“Well, I have a good guess based on my hearing and prior experience with him, and for God’s sake, Pep, do you or do you not want to get everyone out of here in one piece?” Luís snapped back. He had to admit to a satisfied feeling upon seeing Pep’s chagrin. “Why do you always have to _talk_ about things when we’re in a life or death situation?”

“I don’t _have_ to talk. I was just asking you a question that I think was perfectly reasonable given our situation.” Pep rubbed irritably at his chin. “And anyway, it’s more that you won’t talk unless there’s at least a threat of gross bodily harm on the line. I’m fine with saving the discussion for—”

Two things happened at once: Luís’ phone lit up as an emergency-priority message hit it, and a whistling noise started up above them. Luís grabbed Pep’s arm and dragged him out from behind the crate, then swore as he saw a huge shape coming down on top of them. He spun them, saw _another_ dark thing falling towards them and just ran forward.

Thankfully it was into space and not into a wall or a crate. The thing thumped down with a sort of grunting snarl behind them, while the crate it’d knocked off crashed to the ground just a few hairs to their right. They kept running towards the office.

“It’s over here!” Pep shouted. He was struggling to stay up with Luís, so God knew where he got the breath for it. “The Keeper! It’s over—”

“Shut up and run,” Luís growled. He skidded to a stop, then used his momentum to swing Pep ahead of him while pivoting on his heel.

His gun’s sight rose up a long, whitish body. It looked a hell of a lot like those raptors from _Jurassic Park_ , except for the skin, which wasn’t scaly but instead looked faintly slimy, like an earthworm. And then Luís stopped being a naturalist and got off a shot.

He stayed where he was just long enough to see a dark spot bloom high on the creature’s shoulder. Then he threw himself down the aisle. Pep had gone—hopefully—down the space behind the shelves, so as long as the damn thing followed Luís, Pep should easily make the office.

It did follow Luís, after a high-pitched shriek and a tail-thrash that sent another crate tumbling over. Luís heard its claws clattering against the stone floor. Then no claws, but a loud whoosh. He twisted around, still running, and saw the thing leap into the shelves. It slung itself between some boxes and then was out of sight. But it was still moving; he could hear it now. He whipped back and raced for the middle of the warehouse. It had no cover but it had all the lighting, and at this point he wasn’t trying to hide either.

Across the space two figures burst out of the shelves. Cambiasso was waving his arms around instead of looking up, shouting something at Luís, but Zlatan still had his rifle and was trying to aim it over Luís’ head. Luís saw Zlatan’s eyes narrow as he locked on the target.

“No!” Lionel appeared so he could dangle from Zlatan’s elbow and skew the man. “No, don’t—”

“I had it!” Zlatan snapped.

Luís started to spin around. He saw a dart of white and continued to backstep as quick as he could towards the others while trying to aim himself.

“You can’t shoot at those shelves!” Lionel was going on. “There’s—”

“—fuck the antiques! You can put them together lat—”

“—gas line over there! You could hit it!”

Just in time, Luís snapped down his arms. He changed the angle of his backstep so he was heading towards the office. “Over there,” he said, gesturing. “Pep’s already there.”

The thing stuck its head out and watched them scramble away. It really did look like something from a dinosaur exhibit, aside from the odd skin. Once it opened its mouth and curled back its lips to show a long row of sharp teeth. Then it closed its mouth and bobbed its head a few times.

“Cuchu!” Gonzalo said with heartfelt relief, somewhere behind Luís. “Jesus, where were you?”

“In the _office_ ,” Luís started to say.

It jumped down from the shelves. It was about twice as tall as a man but very skinny, a little like a cheetah. Just about as fast as one too, since Luís _didn’t_ blink and it still bounded across the intervening space almost before he could get another shot off.

Zlatan let off a round as well, but they both must have missed since it merely veered off to the right, disappearing back into the shelves. There were only a few more meters to the office and Luís sprinted them. 

Thankfully Pep had gotten there, and already had the door open. He got Luís by the shoulder and dragged him in so hard that it nearly knocked Luís off his feet. Luís caught his balance against the wall, then turned to watch the others stream in: Zlatan, Cambiasso, the two Argentine students…and just as Pep was sucking in a breath, Xavi and Gerard came running out of the shelves.

So did the damn monster, right behind them. Zlatan slid forward before Luís could and lifted his rifle in the same motion. He shot twice, paused, and then shot again. Then he jerked down the rifle and stared in disbelief. At that range, with his skill, with the only problem being to shoot _over_ the fleeing students—he should not have missed.

He didn’t. Luís saw dark blots appear on the monster’s body, same as with his shot, but the monster barely stumbled.

“Don’t shoot at it!” Xavi shouted. He zigged around a pile of wood and then went flat out for the door. “That’s not going to work! You have to—”

Pep at least saw the point in others not wasting their time talking during critical moments. He lunged out, grabbed Xavi and hauled him inside. Then he started back for Gerard, but Luís got hold of his arm and waist and held him back.

Gerard had chosen to jump the same pile Xavi had gone around, but he’d misjudged it in his hurry and had come down on a piece of wood. His stumble lost him precious time, and he lost even more when he turned around to look how close the monster was to him.

“Fucking son of a bitch—” Zlatan muttered, elbowing past Luís and Pep with Cambiasso’s flamethrower. He started it up and waved the flames into the monster’s face just as its head started to drop towards Gerard.

It at least didn’t like fire, jerking back. Gerard got back to his feet. Then the damn monster swung its head around. It locked gazes with Zlatan, and for a moment the twin looks of disgust were eerily similar.

Then the monster swatted out with a clawed hand. The flamethrower went flying—flames shut _off_ , luckily—and Zlatan fell back onto Gerard, who hadn’t fully straightened. Gerard managed to throw himself into his tumble and even though it looked like he’d cracked his head on the floor, his slide carried him all the way to the door. Somebody pulled him the rest of the way inside.

Zlatan had stayed on his feet to do a very nice pirouette. Then he leaped the remaining distance, coming down nearly on Gerard’s feet. His arm flew out and caught Pep in the shoulder, which probably hurt but which helped Luís get them inside. Then he twisted around and slammed the door shut. He hit the lock, Cambiasso immediately shoved a cabinet under the knob and then they all skittered backward. The office had no windows so they couldn’t see what the monster was doing now.

One minute counted itself off in Luís’ head. He was halfway through another when they all heard a loud but distant thump: the monster had gone back to the shelves. Their collective sigh of relief whirled through the room.

“Wow, that was close.”

Everybody turned around. Kun at least had the grace to look embarrassed from his spot behind the desk.

Lionel got around the desk and hugged Kun. Then, when Kun was starting to relax and tell his friend he was all right, Lionel let go of him and hit him on the side of the head. “Next time go home,” Lionel told him, quietly but firmly.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I just…well, at least I found my cross?” Kun said. He hopefully held up it up. “So my grandma’s not gonna kill me.”

“Anyway,” Zlatan said after a long moment. “That door’s probably thick enough to hold for a couple hours but I don’t know if it’s going to last the whole night. And bullets don’t seem to work. So now what?”

* * *

Zlatan hunched over and let Lionel slide off his shoulders. Then he straightened up, pressing his hands into the small of his back. He gave Luís a dirty look. “Ceiling’s solid. Happy now?”

“Thrilled,” Luís drawled. In fact he had rather mixed feelings, since on the one hand, they only had to watch the door. On the other, the door was their only exit. Getting themselves trapped in a small room hadn’t been in his plans for the night either.

Another scraping noise came from outside. Luís looked up long enough to determine that it wasn’t close enough to worry about, then turned around. At this point he was supposed to come up with a way to get them out, to kill that monster, and to make Pep stop flipping out over whatever it was that—Luís honestly, truly believed that he was more competent than this. Compared with an entire cave system full of booby-traps, one dinosaur running around an Argentine university’s warehouse shouldn’t even faze him. And yet he was standing around in a dark room, no doubt about to make the next of a string of amateurish mistakes this trip.

While he’d have to ask Zinedine to be certain, Luís was also fairly sure that he had not been this damn maudlin and pessimistic up till recently. What the hell was wrong with him?

Someone cleared his throat at Luís’ elbow. He’d stiffened before he even turned around and saw that it was Pep with something clearly on his mind. Truthfully, Luís didn’t even want to try right now.

“Signal’s back,” Xavi suddenly said. For the past fifteen minutes he’d been poking at his phone, muttering something about having more bars than he was seeing. Now he hopped off the desk and pointed meaningfully to his mobile. “So Andrés thinks he got a match on the shards.”

“Does that even matter at this point?” Gerard asked. The blow to the head he’d taken had opened up a nasty cut above his eyebrow, but fortunately hadn’t seemed to do any permanent damage to his skull or what was inside it. “Whatever the fuck that used to be, it’s got nothing to do with that thing out there. You saw it—it’s some dinosaur.”

The dark might have been distorting Xavi’s usual politeness, but he looked a tad exasperated. “Yeah, I know, but there’s no way that that thing could’ve fit in the crate. Remember, you just about fit in it, and that raptor thing is twice your size. At least.”

“Shards?” Zlatan wandered over and began peering at Xavi’s phone over Xavi’s shoulder. He made a face at whatever he saw, then blinked innocently when Xavi looked at him. Then he frowned and pulled his own phone out of his pocket.

“Luís,” Pep started. “I…look, I do agree with you that this is an inconvenient time, but we need to talk. Or else we’re going to keep fighting instead of being productive and—”

“I really don’t think those are the only two choices out there,” Luís muttered. He checked the clip on his pistol, then looked at the door again. Then he closed his eyes and tried to remember the blueprint layout of the building.

He had to open his eyes when Pep jabbed two fingers into his chest. The other man had come around to stand nearly nose-to-nose with Luís and had set his shoulders to make it clear that heaven and earth weren’t going to move him before he had his say. “Well, what other choice do you see?” Pep demanded. “Every time you try to put it off, it only blows up again and at the worst time.”

“And whose fault, exactly, is it that it keeps blowing up? I don’t recall asking to talk about myself when I’d be better off remembering other people are depending on me,” Luís snapped back.

Pep rocked back on his heels as if he’d been slapped. His eyes widened and they stayed that way for so long that Luís began to rethink his hasty words.

But when Luís put out his hand, Pep abruptly swerved away from it. He jerked his arm up around himself, then dropped it and lifted his head. His eyes were blazing. “ _Exactly_ ,” he said.

That one word could have cut steel. And yet, Luís had no idea what it meant or could be referring to or—no, he didn’t like being mad at Pep, and he liked even less doing things that put that raw hurt in Pep’s eyes, but damn it all to hell, he did not _understand_ what was wrong with the man. “Listen, I don’t read minds. If you want me to do something, or to stop doing something, you should just—”

“—tell me and then I might get what the fuck we’re even fighting about!” Zlatan suddenly exclaimed.

After a moment, Luís took a deep breath. He pressed his fingers against his temple, which attracted Pep’s attention. The other man had been looking confused about the interruption, but now his eyes narrowed on Luís. So of course Luís turned around to see if Zlatan was, in fact, once again taking a personal call.

Zlatan walked around in a little circle, not liking what he was hearing from his phone. He missed a loud whump outside of the office because he was too busy puffing up and then blowing out his cheeks. “What the fuck? _My_ fault? I’m not even there! I’m in Argentina!” he said loudly, as if some prehistoric man-eating monster wasn’t tramping around outside. When Gerard tried to shush him, Zlatan made several one-handed rude gestures. Then his eyes bugged out at whatever he was being told. “I did not fucking—listen to me, you Roman son of a bitch, just because I live with you doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do. I had a fucking life before you showed up and anyway you’re always telling me I have to pull my weight. And I was fucking doing that, so I don’t see what the problem is.”

Luís sighed. “Ibra.”

“And I’m sick and tired of fucking telling you that nothing happened, that you have nothing to worry about and you know what? You don’t believe me, you can go talk to your stupid bastard contacts. And then you can go to hell, because I’m not fucking coming _back_ from Argentina if you can’t just fucking take my word for once in your goddamn life.”

“ _Zlatan_ ,” Luís snarled. “Get off the phone or I will—”

Apparently mere electronic exposure to Nesta was enough to affect Zlatan’s intelligence. He whipped around and jabbed his phone at Luís. “Or what? Look, Figo, I like you but stay the fuck out of this. And don’t tell me to focus on the fucking job when this whole fucking thing is about your tweedy boyfriend.”

Luís…had honestly never heard that sort of tone from Zlatan. He had to mentally note it down. And then he had to stuff Zlatan’s ego into the nearest crate and ship it to some Godforsaken place where he wouldn’t have to think about it. “Zlatan, I really don’t think you meant to say that.”

To his credit, Zlatan already appeared to be having second thoughts about it. But before he could really react, somebody elbowed Luís hard in the side. Then Pep stepped in between them, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

“He has a point, Luís,” Pep said in measured tones.

“Er…” said someone behind them. “Should we be hearing this?”

“It’s either that or we get eaten,” came a grim reply.

“Pep, this isn’t something you should—” Luís started.

“No, of course not. It’s never something I should bother with, it’s merely your ‘thing’ and I just need to sit around and wait till you’re done with it.” Pep stepped into Luís’ personal space and unfolded one arm so he could grab the hand Luís raised between them. “You cannot goddamn tell me to just tell you what I want if you never stay in one place long enough for me to _do_ that. You know, I don’t like being like this. I don’t like being, being inconsiderate, and interrupting you, and I am intelligent enough to realize when we’re in goddamn danger, Luís. But sometimes I just can’t stand—”

Luís exhaled. He twisted his arm down and Pep didn’t let go, so they were pulled together to the point of bumping knees. “You know what I can’t stand? I can’t stand that you always have to turn something completely unrelated into a reason to bring us up.”

“It’s not unrelated!” Pep snapped. “It’s completely related! You obviously keep people with dysfunctional relationships around to make yourself feel like you’re completely above that sort of thing! When you’re not! At least your friend _talks_ to his significant others!”

Zlatan started like he’d forgotten he was there. Then he cleared his throat in an embarrassed way and put his phone to his ear. “I…listen, Sandro, you heard that, right? Look, I’m really not trying to hang up on you, but I can’t do this right now. I think the professor’s losing it.”

Then he jumped back as Pep whirled ferociously on him. “I’m not losing it, and I do _not_ wear tweed,” Pep informed him in a seething tone. Then Pep turned back to Luís. He grabbed a handful of Luís’ shirt and twisted it so Luís distinctly held a button pop off. “I’m tired of having you push me away and throw out the clever little quips so you can run off to God knows where, and I don’t know when or if you’re coming back. You want me to tell you what’s wrong? _That’s_ what’s wrong, you self-centered prick.”

“I think I’m leaning towards getting eaten,” said someone who was possibly Gerard.

Luís…still didn’t understand. “Wait. What? Your problem is you don’t know when I’m coming back? Pep, I’m sorry but you knew what kind of things I do when you met me, and they’re not the sort that allow for a regular workweek.”

“Oh—” Pep squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head. He looked so pained that Luís touched his temple without thinking. Of course the moment Luís touched him, Pep reared back with blazing eyes. “I’m not concerned about what time you come back. Not when I don’t even know if you’re coming back at _all_.”

Then his shoulders abruptly slumped inwards and his gaze fell. His hand in Luís’ shirt went slack and Luís had to grab Pep’s arm and waist to keep the other man from sliding off him. All of the anger had suddenly drained out of Pep. Except for—no, that jerk away from Luís wasn’t out of disgust so much as to keep Pep’s face hidden. It was obvious anyway that Pep was struggling with a different emotion now.

“I don’t know why you would think that,” Luís finally said. He moved his hand from Pep’s bicep to elbow so he didn’t have to grip the man as hard to keep him on his feet. “I’ve never said I was leaving.”

“Well, no, but you never said you were staying. And you did leave right after saving everybody from Mourinho, and we didn’t hear from you till you showed up three months later. And this is the first thing like that that’s happened since then, so it’s not like it’s clear you wouldn’t disappear again.” Then Xavi swallowed and looked down at his phone. His brows twitched together in mock concentration. “Just from what I know, and totally my own opinion. I don’t know what Pep thinks because we’ve never talked about it. And whenever you’re done, Andrew and I think we’ve got the monster figured out.”

Near the end of that, Pep had started to lift his head. His eyes were reddening, and that was about all Luís had time to notice before the door suddenly splintered under a vicious blow.

* * *

The door didn’t fully break till the third blow. By then everyone had taken whatever cover they could find, which wasn’t much: the office was oddly sparse considering all the clutter in the warehouse. Luís had hauled Pep down behind a folding chair and had locked his fingers around the man’s wrist. It was going to make shooting harder, but at this point he’d given up on trying to do one or the other. And he _was_ good enough to multitask. He was good enough to do whatever he had to do to straighten out this bizarre notion Pep had about him, and to do it so they were still alive at the end. “Xavi!”

“It’s a shapeshifter, like the legend said!” Xavi shouted from somewhere in the vicinity of the desk. “It takes on the form of whatever it eats! It ate a statue, Andrés found one just like it in a museum in London, and it probably got shipped as that by accident—”

A large fragment of the door burst off and went skittering across the room. Through the resulting hole Luís glimpsed slimy white skin. Then the monster whipped out of sight.

“So where the fuck did it find a dinosaur to eat?” Zlatan demanded. He’d swapped his rifle for someone’s flamethrower and was trying to get it to start, but something seemed to be wrong with the ignition.

“Oh, shit, that was probably the Milito brothers’ project,” Gonzalo said. He crawled out from behind the desk and grabbed the flamethrower from Zlatan, smacked something and got flames to come out. “There are a lot of dino fossils in South America.”

Zlatan rolled his eyes. Then he blew out his breath in disbelief as his phone went off. He yanked it out of his pocket—“I know, don’t yell at me!” to Luís—and flung it at the door.

The phone went straight through the hole, though from the look on Zlatan’s face, he hadn’t meant to do that. They listened for the clatter of it smashing against the ground, but instead heard an odd click and then slurp. Some crunchy chewing followed.

“I think it needs to eat something bigger than that to change,” Xavi said after a moment. “It ate the bullets you shot at it, and some of that guy, and didn’t change into either of those, so…”

“Well, what else do you have out there?” Luís called out.

Pep twitched. “Luís, those are some very rare artifacts—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, I remember you’re a damn archaeologist.” On second thought, shooting wasn’t really going to be something Luís needed to do, and this pistol wasn’t one he minded losing. He shoved it away and started looking around the office for ideas. “And of course it’s not going to help if it just eats another dinosaur. I meant a forklift or something we could actually disable.”

“Sorry,” Pep said softly.

Luís could hear the monster stalking around near the door but he had to look at the other man. As expected, Pep’s shoulders were drooping again.

“Pep,” Luís said. He pressed his lips together. He knew perfectly well what he had to say but he…well, it would be a first. He hadn’t had one of those in a while. Since he’d met Pep, actually, and that did seem to settle the matter. “Pep, I’m n—”

The monster rammed the door, putting its head, shoulders and one arm through the upper part. The bottom part was still being held shut by the cabinet Cambiasso had pushed across it, but only just. Then the thing wriggled around a little, looking at them. It snapped its jaws a few times before pulling back.

“Go! Get going!” Zlatan immediately leaped up and ran _at_ the door.

Before Luís could yell at him, Zlatan had jumped through the upper half and was outside, screaming and waving the flamethrower around at something. Luís cursed and looked frantically around. He saw Kun standing up with the other flamethrower in hand.

“Pep, you’re infuriating but I love you, so obviously I’ll come back,” Luís said, jerking the other man up by the arm. He kissed Pep hard while Pep was staring at him, then dropped Pep’s arm and dashed across the room. Kun was too surprised to stop him as Luís yanked the flamethrower from him and then ran out after Zlatan.

* * *

When Zlatan was fighting, he had absolutely no problems with his focus. He started trading off the target role with Luís without Luís even having to tell him to, as the two of them tried to lure the monster away from the office.

“Dead end over here!” he shouted. He jumped up onto a crate and nearly lost hold of his flamethrower in the process. By the time he got it back up, the monster was about to bite off his head.

Luís kicked up a piece of wood and then flung it at the monster. It wasn’t nearly heavy enough to do any damage but it got the thing to turn its head away. Then Zlatan flamed its cheek and it stumbled back, screeching. It whipped its head around and Luís glimpsed charred skin. Then it spotted him and he had to backtrack. He went for a stack of boxes, then stopped when he saw those crates had had their tops opened and had what looked like pottery packed inside.

“Figo!” Zlatan yelled.

Just in time Luís ducked and spun away. He hit something with the tip of his flamethrower and jumped back from it, then nearly had his leg clawed off as he dove into the shelves. Fine, he respected history but those damn jars had better have been some missing link. Otherwise they weren’t nearly worth—he was at a dead end as well. He cursed, twisted around and barely had time to crank the flamethrower up as high as it’d go before the monster shoved its jaws at him.

The fire made the thing retreat, but not without a wicked backlash with its tail. Luís did his best but the side of the tail caught his raised arm and shoulder, sending him back into the wall. A white-hot streak of pain flared up his arm.

Well. Broken arm. This really wasn’t going well, Luís thought. Then he heard something and remembered the damn monster. He blinked hard to get the dancing lights out of his eyes and struggled to stand. The flamethrower had a backpack and its weight was throwing off his balance, and he couldn’t right himself because he couldn’t push down with a broken arm.

“Hey! Hey, you big ugly piece of shit!” Zlatan called. “Yeah, you! C’mere! Over here! Me! Eat me!”

Also, Zlatan didn’t know how to rescue people. Luís dropped the flamethrower’s nozzle and slipped his good arm out of its strap, then pivoted in the opposite direction. Thankfully the backpack straps hadn’t gotten twisted around, so the move got his broken arm free with a minimum of jostling. His vision had come back and he could see the monster about five meters away, well within lunging distance. It was dithering between him and a catcalling Zlatan, swinging its head back and forth between them. When Luís tried to stand, the monster whipped back to him.

Luís cradled his arm against his chest and stayed where he was, crouched against the wall. He watched the monster as he pushed the flamethrower’s tanks in front of him with his foot. The thing took a step forward and Luís stopped. It raised its head, then lowered it and turned it to the side as if it couldn’t see that well.

“ _Hey_. You fucking slimy piece of shit, you’re supposed to pay attention to _me_.” Zlatan stormed up behind the monster, waving around his flamethrower’s nozzle like a conductor’s baton.

The monster blinked a last time at Luís, then abruptly swiveled on Zlatan. Apparently that wasn’t supposed to happen yet, judging by Zlatan’s bugged-out eyes. The other man skidded to a stop, then scrambled backwards while fumbling at his flamethrower. Luís shook his head, pinned his flamethrower in place with his foot and turned it on.

He caught most of the monster’s tail in the fiery plume. The thing shrieked and leaped sideways, crashing into some shelves. Then it skittered drunkenly from side to side in the aisle, trying to twist back on itself to claw at its tail. Something was dripping off it and leaving sticky-looking puddles on the ground; at the same time, the air filled with an awful stench. Not exactly burnt, strangely enough: more like rotted flesh.

The monster finally managed to bat out the flames on its tail, which was noticeably shorter. So it could lose mass if they burned it. Now all Luís had to do was—

—dodge into the next aisle when the monster suddenly lunged at him. And of course he couldn’t take the flamethrower with him, since he was effectively now one-armed. Luís cursed under his breath and kept running till he’d run out of the shelves and into the cleared middle area. A forklift appeared seemingly out of nowhere and he had to bank hard right to avoid its lifting spikes. Then he ducked around it and turned to see how close the monster was, only to—not see it. He looked up.

At that moment, the monster landed on top of the forklift, claws shining, teeth gnashing, and generally looking confident that it was going to eat Luís. And Luís had to say that he couldn’t see much reason to doubt it. He’d made one silly mistake after another and hadn’t had the balls to face up to that, and this was just about what he’d earned.

The monster’s open mouth came down at Luís.

And then the monster jerked back up. It didn’t have a piece of Luís in it but it had something stuck in its mouth. The thing shook its head wildly, paused to claw at its lip, and then shook its head again. It let out a strangled noise, then arched its neck and back in a violent clear-the-throat motion that saw it fall right off the forklift on the opposite side to Luís. The ground trembled with the impact. Then again as someone clamped their arms around Luís, including his bad arm.

“Luís! Luís, you—you—and you think I’m _infuriat_ —Luís?”

“Arm,” Luís managed.

Xavi, naturally, piped up. “It looks like it’s broken.”

“Oh!” Pep let go of Luís in exchange for some frantic patting at Luís’ back and shoulders. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—did I?”

“No.” Luís took a few deep breaths and concentrated on being in a dark enclosed space with a man-eating thing. His vision cleared and he looked up.

Pep was staring at him with huge concerned eyes. The other man had his fingers wrapped up in folds of Luís’ shirt and was chewing his lip so hard that it was turning white where his teeth pressed into it. He flinched back when he realized Luís could actually see him, then straightened his shoulders. “Luís—”

“Where is it?” Luís asked, turning away.

The grad students plus Zlatan and Cambiasso were crowded around the forklift, looking at something on the ground. Gerard heard Luís and raised his head, then waved them over. “It worked,” he said, pointing downwards.

“The Keeper legend says it all started with this artifact the man stole and I thought it might be inside. So we found a big jar and Pep gave it to the thing to eat so the thing turned into pottery. Which broke when it fell off, and this was inside.” Xavi nodded towards a roundish carving made out of a patchy black and white stone. It was about the size of a man’s head and surrounded by vibrating pottery shards, which were constantly trying to pull together. The students were taking turns sticking out their feet to keep the pieces apart. “I think we should probably box that up and ship it back to the dig.”

“Yes, that’d be an excellent idea. Considering this whole thing started.” And then Pep stopped. He thought hard while everyone waited. Then his face cleared and he looked up. “Well, Xavi, you seem to have things well in hand. Can you take care of the clean-up for a few minutes?”

Xavi blinked. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then pinched himself. After a good wince, he nodded slowly. “Er…sure, Pep. I…”

“Wonderful.” Pep then turned on his heel and grabbed Luís by the shoulders. “We need to finish talking.”

“I wasn’t actually planning on going anywhere,” Luís said. He gingerly settled his broken arm against his chest. “Really. I—you know, I honestly don’t know what else you want me to do. I gave up my job, moved in with you, make sure bizarre things don’t eat you or your friends, or for that matter, colleagues you don’t really like—”

“Luís, I love you.” A deep flush rose in Pep’s cheeks and he had to take a long, slightly shaky breath before he continued. His eyes didn’t move from Luís’ face. “But when you do things like that, you make me want to kill you. That is—I _know_ you were doing all those things, but I didn’t know why. For all I knew, it could’ve been just how you date people, because it’s just like how you do your work. You’re thorough and you think of everything except you forget to mention that to others until the last minute, and all I wanted was to know why and you finally tell me just before you try to get eaten! You cannot tell people you love them and then _do_ that!”

And now Pep was starting to shake Luís and that wasn’t good for the arm. “Ow,” Luís muttered.

Pep promptly stopped. He bit his lip, looking guilty yet righteously upset. It was a combination that probably only worked on him. “Damn it. Luís, I’m—”

“You have a point. Although I wasn’t trying to get eaten, I was just trying to get that damn thing away from you.” Luís glanced down at his arm, more to buy time than because he was actually concerned about it. “I…Pep, I probably date like I work because I don’t date people. But I am trying with you. You’re the first and hopefully the last person I’m ever going to say those words to, so if you could— _no_. Broken arm.”

“Oh, right,” Pep said, backing off. He let go of Luís and tried to look more sympathetic than disappointed about the vetoed public display of affection. “We should take you to a hospital. Do you go to hospitals? Because honestly, I—well, I’d rather you didn’t go off for three months at a time but I can handle it as long as I know you’re coming back and—”

Luís adjusted his arm out of the way, then leaned forward and kissed Pep. He had to crane his head awkwardly and when Pep put his hands back on Luís’ shoulders, it still jostled his arm. But it was worth it.

* * *

_Several Days Later_

Lionel plopped down on the couch with a deep sigh of relief. He let his head fall back and just lay there, listening to his friends’ chuckles and the background noise of the hotel lobby behind the lounge. Then he grimaced as his back spiked with pain. He lifted his head and put his hand behind himself to rub at his sore muscles.

“Take it you finished packing up all those bits?” Gerard asked, handing Lionel a mug of coffee.

They’d sent the carved ball back to the dig—plastered with a zillion magical symbols and boxed in with some other weird artifacts Zanetti had gotten out of the archives—for the excavators to try to return to its rightful owners. But even after that, the pottery bits of the monster were still powered-up enough to try and reunite themselves. At this point they could probably only make the jar they’d used to be, but nobody was taking any chances, and so Lionel had spent the past two days helping to individually box up the pieces till they could figure out how to un-animate them. His fingers ached where he’d kept hitting them with the hammer.

“How’s Dr. Simeone?” Xavi asked.

“He got released to—” Lionel started.

Someone was yelling at the concierge. They all turned around and saw a dark-haired man dramatically waving his arms around. Then another man walked up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the elevators, where Zlatan had just come out. Zlatan saw the two at the desk, froze stiff and then settled back on his heels. He crossed his arms over his chest and raised his chin as if he was expecting a scolding.

If he’d kept his arms out, he might have kept his balance better when the dark-haired man slammed into him. Zlatan’s eyes went wide and he stared down at the man hugging him. The two of them scuffled in place for a few seconds. Then the third man reached them and…and grabbed Zlatan’s hair in an affectionate tug before patting him on the shoulder.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Zlatan finally said.

The hugger looked up. Then he hastily unwound himself, stepped back, and jabbed an accusing finger at Zlatan. “You! You—it sounded like some damn thing _ate_ you, and then you didn’t even call back. Do you know how goddamn worried Paolo was?”

Paolo was apparently the third man. He still had hold of Zlatan’s shoulder and was smiling. “It’s so good that you’re all right.”

“I—yeah, no, look, this thing ate my phone, not me. And wait a minute, the last _I_ heard, you were telling me I’m a lying shit when I _didn’t_ lie, and I was saying I wasn’t taking your bullshit anymore, Sandro,” Zlatan snapped, his eyes narrowing.

“I know, but I think we were all a little worked up and saying things we didn’t mean,” Paolo said. He looked at Zlatan as if he wanted a reply.

For a while Zlatan didn’t say anything, which seemed to make both of the other men nervous. Sandro more than Paolo; Sandro fidgeted in place and then finally grabbed Zlatan’s arm. “You’re not leaving,” he said. “If nothing happened, then you’ve got nothing to leave for.”

“Yeah, but I can only take so much of your—” Zlatan sounded distinctly softer.

“Sorry.” Sandro stood stiffly in place. Then he made a face and strode past Zlatan while still holding onto Zlatan’s arm. “Come on, where’s your room? I’m not going to make a scene out here.”

Zlatan was starting to grin. He also hadn’t moved except to turn his head and watch the other man tug at his arm. “Yeah?”

“Please?” Paolo sighed. He came up and started pushing gently at Zlatan’s side, and that got Zlatan to move. The three of them went into an elevator.

The elevator doors closed. It was a pretty big elevator but for some reason the three of them all crowded together in one corner of it.

“So how’s the clean-up going?” Gerard asked after a moment.

“Um, okay. Turns out we didn’t break anything really important during the fight, and Dr. Simeone got on the phone to yell at the dean when he tried to yell at us,” Lionel drank some of his coffee. It woke up his stomach so that growled embarrassingly; he grabbed at his belly and stared down into his mug. Something nudged his arm and he looked over, then up. Then he gave Xavi a thank-you smile and took the pastry. “Oh, and that specialist the police were waiting for finally showed up. He was annoyed it was all done already, but that’s about it.”

Another commotion over at the concierge desk got their attention. It was another man demanding to see—Lionel strained his ears—to see Figo?

Looking concerned, Xavi started to get out of his seat. But then another man strode through the front door. He peered around, stopped when he saw the desk and looked both resigned and…sort of smug. “David?”

The man at the desk whipped around. Then he stormed up to the new guy and shook his finger in the man’s face. “What the hell are you doing here? Did Figo call you? It’s bad enough that I had five delayed flights, then finally got here and my job’s not a job anymore thanks to Figo, and that’s just the latest time he’s fucked up my life—”

“Oh, stop blaming Figo,” the new guy said. “And it wasn’t him, it was Raúl who called to let me know you were making a fuss. Figo just takes care of his own business. He can’t help that you constantly overreact.”

David lifted his brows. “Overreact? From the man who flew to Portugal in a snit because I changed the locks.”

“You changed the locks right before I came back from a week in Siberia,” the new guy snarled. He was starting to lose the smug part of his expression. “All I wanted was to get in, shower and go to bed, but no. You were throwing a ridiculous temper tantrum. In fact, you’re still throwing it. If that’s how it’s going to be, then I don’t know why I—”

“Don’t you turn your—”

The new guy did turn around, David lunged at him and before Lionel could blink, the two men had rolled their wrestling match outside. One of the bellhops and a passerby began to try to pull them apart, but it didn’t seem to be going well.

“So, anyway, I think Pep’s all right,” Gerard said. “He ordered lunch in today.”

Lionel turned back and stared at Gerard, who grinned as he nodded. Pep _never_ ordered lunch for himself, period. He never even remembered lunch.

“Thank God I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” Xavi muttered. “So listen, he’s basically spending the whole day in with Figo and we’re not scheduled to fly out till tomorrow. We’re done, you’re done—want to sneak out and catch a football match?”

It was Lionel’s turn to grin. He pulled out the tickets Kun had snagged them as an apology for the trouble he’d caused. Then he tossed back his coffee and crammed his pastry into his mouth. By the time he was done, the others were on their feet. Kun had said he’d try to park a block down, so they edged out past the fighting men and then down the hotel’s front steps. Xavi slung his arm over Lionel’s shoulder and Lionel thought that, all in all, it hadn’t been a bad visit.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm riffing on action and monster movie clichés, but the monster is completely made-up and not intentionally based on any real-life monster.
> 
> Originally written in 2010.


End file.
